


Cloud Cover

by thegraytigress



Series: Heart of the Storm [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Action/Adventure, BAMF Natasha Romanov, BAMF Steve Rogers, Drama, Established Relationship, F/M, Hurt Clint Barton, Hurt Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanov Feels, Protective Natasha Romanov, Protective Steve Rogers, Romance, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-31
Updated: 2015-03-06
Packaged: 2018-03-04 13:53:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 186,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3070580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegraytigress/pseuds/thegraytigress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alone and pregnant, Natasha's running from HYDRA. Lost and fighting to stay true to himself, Steve's searching for the Winter Soldier. To survive this last nightmare, they have to find their way back to each other, and Steve has to remember what it means to be Captain America because the world and Natasha need him more now than ever before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **DISCLAIMER:** _Captain America: The First Avenger, Captain America: The Winter Soldier,_ and _The Avengers_ are the properties of Walt Disney Studios, Paramount Studios, and Marvel Studios. This work was created purely for enjoyment. No money was made, and no infringement was intended.
> 
>  **RATING:** M (for language, violence, adult situations)
> 
>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE:** This is the fourth part of _Heart of the Storm_ and the direct sequel to "Terminal Frost". This story should round out many of the themes and plotlines of the first two parts of the series, so I highly recommend you read "Red Rain" and "Terminal Frost" before this. If you don't, you should still be able to follow along, but things will definitely make more sense if you do. I don't think this story is going to be as dark as "Terminal Frost" was, but if you're looking for rainbow dreams and fluffy flowers, you're in the wrong place :-). Still, this is strong, established Steve/Natasha, and the two of them are going to work it out. I promise. There's a happy ending coming.
> 
> This is obviously AU, and I'll be incorporating elements from the comics, from MCU, and whatever else I deem necessary. There will be some familiar faces (and villains), as well as some new ones. Clint, Sam, Tony, and the rest of the Avengers will appear. Blanket warnings for violence, language, and adult situations. Also, there will be some mention of forced sterilization and abortion in this story (nothing graphic), if that upsets you.
> 
> Enjoy, and thanks for reading as always!

The Capitol was busy, extremely so, and Natasha hated every minute she had to spend there.  The grand hallways were crowded with people, politicians and aides and security and media, and being surrounded was amplifying her already heightened sense of paranoia.  “This is bullshit,” Clint muttered beside her.  The two former SHIELD agents were sitting on an uncomfortable wooden bench outside the chamber where the Senate Armed Service Committee was preparing to convene for the third day of testimony on the fall of SHIELD.  She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye.  Clint was restless, fidgety, and pretty much at the end of his rope.  His gray eyes warily flicked over the massive throng of people waiting to get access to the meeting room.  Like buzzards circling carrion, eager to get a taste.  “Hate this.  Bad enough having to be here, but then they make you wait like they’re goddamn gods on high descending.”

Natasha didn’t answer.  She probably should have.  Clint’s patience had been eroding steadily since the hearings had begun.  Ever since SHIELD had been revealed to be HYDRA, the government and the public alike had been scrambling for answers.  What this meant.  How it had happened.  Who was at fault.  The massive dump of all of SHIELD’s most valuable secrets onto the internet had been proverbial fuel to a fire, spreading concern and disorder throughout the globe.  More than this, though, the complete destruction of SHIELD Headquarters in Washington DC and the massive crash site in the Potomac River where the Avengers had brought down Project: Insight had been a pretty firm indication of how close the world had come to global catastrophe.  HYDRA’s evil was vast and reached back to World War II, when the Nazis had nearly destroyed humanity in their lust for power.  HYDRA had been deeply set into SHIELD.  The Secretary of the Defense.  The STRIKE Team.  So many agents.  No one had known about it or even suspected it for decades.  Only when Captain America had discovered the danger had it all come to light.  And only when he had taken a stand against it had it all come crashing down.

Natasha closed her eyes against the pain.  And the nausea.  It came on with all the warning of a sudden storm and all the mercy of a barreling freight train.  Her throat tightened, her stomach doing rolls and flips inside her.  _Hold it together.  Hold it together._   She was a master at controlling her emotions, at hiding her weaknesses and exploiting the weaknesses of others.  But she hadn’t been so in control recently.  Not even for weeks.  For months.  And it had been exponentially worse since Steve had left her.

“Nat?  You okay?”  Clint’s question jerked her out of concentrating on keeping her stomach exactly where it was.  For a fleeting moment, she nearly broke down and ran for the bathroom.  Nearly.  But she didn’t.  She opened her eyes and saw Clint staring at her, a broken expression of concern twisting his face.  “What’s wrong with you?  Are you sick?  You look like–”

“I’m fine,” she managed.  Her mouth tasted positively weird, her tongue stiff and thick.  She’d never imagined being pregnant would feel like this.  Sure, she’d heard about morning sickness and things tasting and smelling strangely and the headaches and inability to concentrate.  But she’d never in her wildest thoughts even remotely _fathomed_ these things would happen to _her_.  The symptoms had thrown her so completely for a loop, left her reeling and wondering how she was supposed to hide what was happening.  Ever since she’d been a young girl, she’d possessed such remarkable physical command over herself.  Her time in the Red Room had honed her skills as a martial artist, acrobat, and assassin (and seductress, but lately she was having a harder and harder time accepting that).  She’d been turned into the perfect weapon, and a perfect weapon could only function with complete control over her mind, heart, and body.  She had _none_ of that now.  Her heart was broken.  Her mind was lost and uncertain.  And her body was pretty damn determined to betray her.

So she wasn’t fine.  She wasn’t sure how long she could keep lying about it.  She made herself stare forward into the crowd of people anxiously waiting for the morning’s hearing to begin just so she wouldn’t falter under Clint’s analytic stare.  Clint had been constantly with her in the last few weeks since Steve had left with Sam on a crazy quest to find the Winter Soldier.  She didn’t know why he’d stayed with her exactly.  Well, there were the obvious reasons.  In the wake of SHIELD’s collapse, they were leaderless, rudderless, _purposeless_ with Fury gone.  Maria Hill was around, but the majority of SHIELD’s infrastructure was destroyed, dismantled, and agents were scattering to the wind and other organizations.  The two of them were for all intents and purposes alone.  Being Avengers and therefore the most publically recognizable faces of SHIELD, they had been immediately summoned to testify before Congress.  Neither of them was at all interested in subjecting themselves to this politically-motivated blame-fest, but they had no choice.  They’d been hung out to dry, so they were closing ranks with each other as they always did, protecting each other because they had no one else.  Stark was rich and powerful and he’d wiped the floor with the Armed Services and Intelligence Committees in the past, so going after him was a risky venture for the senators looking to make a statement with these hearings.  Steve was gone (although Natasha made herself believe he would never have left if he’d known this was on the horizon), and even if he hadn’t been, Captain America was such a beloved symbol to the nation that no politician in his or her right mind would even consider coming after him.  She and Clint were alone, exposed, and convenient targets.

But it wasn’t just that.  Natasha was fairly certain Clint was trying to atone for everything that had happened, to make amends for how he had hurt her.  Time had tempered her anger over the role he’d had in SHIELD’s downfall.  She could think about it logically now, and she realized he had had no choice.  If he hadn’t played along with the STRIKE Team’s cruel treatment of Steve when Steve had been SHIELD’s prisoner, they would have lost everything.  Their only chance of taking down Project: Insight had ridden almost entirely on Clint’s ability to convince SHIELD that he’d betrayed her and Steve, and he’d done it because Clint was a master spy and he could make the tough calls like no one else could.  Still, Steve had been tortured in front of his eyes, tortured by Rumlow and his lackeys and tortured by the Winter Soldier.  Natasha was seeing more and more over these last weeks that that was haunting her long-time friend.  The things he’d seen.  The things he’d done.  Clint had been forced to shoot Steve to prevent his escape, damning Steve to the hell he’d suffered, and that wasn’t something Clint could easily forgive himself.  He was trying to make amends by sticking close to her now, guarding her, being there in case she needed him.  She’d wondered a few times if Steve hadn’t asked him to do this.  It didn’t matter.  Clint was there, and it was a relief and a torture at once.  He was a source of comfort to her, and she was starting to think that nothing and no one would ever be able to change that.  But he knew her so well that the lies she was barely able to tell weren’t convincing him.  He knew something was wrong.

Something more than the obvious.  “You hear from Rogers?”

“No.”  She kept her voice calm, even as her heart ached in her chest and her stomach roiled anew.  Steve had been gone nearly a month now, and she hadn’t heard a thing from him.  She didn’t know when he was coming back (or if he was coming back).  She didn’t even know if he was okay.  He hadn’t been when he’d left her.  She supposed she could have gone after him, or had Tony track him (Tony had all but offered to do it), or at least tried to call him.  But she was still angry with him, much angrier with him than she was with Clint, and she couldn’t bring herself to do it.  It was petty and childish and damn _stupid_ , but that was how she felt.

Clint sighed and leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands together.  He was wearing a suit, an expensive one that Stark had gotten for him.  Dark blue with a white shirt and a blue and silver checked tie.  She didn’t think she’d ever get used to seeing him dressed like this.  Like a civilian.  “I’m sure he’s fine.”

Honestly, Natasha didn’t want to think about Steve.  She had enough problems of her own, most of them caused by him.  And when she started to think about him, she couldn’t stop, so she made herself ignore it all.  The echoes of the hurtful argument they’d had back at Avengers Tower in New York City were still troubling her.  God, she was miserable without him.  Miserable not knowing if he was safe.  Miserable not knowing if it was over between them.  He’d said no, but then again, what he’d said and what he had done to her weren’t exactly copacetic.  He’d told her he loved her, but then told her he’d never gotten over what she’d done to him in Crimea, how she’d manipulated him and lied to him and used him.  _Shot him._   And he’d told her he wanted her, but then he’d walked away from her to save the man who’d nearly murdered her.  And she understood that he was suffering and broken himself, but _god damn it,_ running away wasn’t the answer.  _He_ had been the one to teach her that, and he’d been so blinded by his own anguish that he’d forgotten it.

She stopped herself before she sank any further into it.  She needed distance.  Numbness.  Apathy.  She could manage this lie.  She had to.  The minute she acknowledged Steve and all the pain and loss and grief and _yearning_ , it was too easy to succumb to it and just break down.  It was all there, trapped inside her heart, closed up and locked away, and she wasn’t letting it out.  She hadn’t, not since she’d cried in New York after their fight.  And she wouldn’t again.  Maybe he’d changed her, but she was still capable of putting on one of her masks and showing the world what she wanted them to see.  She was still stubborn and proud and strong.  She was still Black Widow.  And Black Widow did not cry.

 _Bullshit._   Who the hell was she kidding?  Certainly not herself.

And forgetting how he’d changed her?  How much she loved him?

Pretty difficult with his baby growing inside her.

She resisted the strong urge to brush her hand over the flat of her lower stomach, instead curling her fingers over the fabric of the sleek, black pantsuit she was wearing.  “I’m sure he is, too,” she agreed emptily.

Clint regarded her with narrowed eyes, but before he could say anything further, a woman emerged from the meeting chamber and announced the hearing was about to start.  Natasha closed her eyes momentarily, trying yet again to quell the nausea building in her throat, trying to find some semblance of her normal stoicism.  Fleeting was the best way to describe it.  During her brief struggle to gather herself, a group of men strolled down the hall toward them.  She grimaced inwardly, tightening her jaw.  Senator Stern was on his way over to them, oozing arrogance with every oily step.  He was flanked by his aides and security.  The man was positively deplorable, the very definition of a prick.  She remembered watching him trying to best Tony a few years ago when she’d been undercover at Stark Industries.  Stern had been downright (and laughably) desperate to exert his dominance and seize the Iron Man suit on behalf of the government.  She doubted he’d changed much.  He walked with the swagger of a man who thought way too much of himself, who expected people to grovel before him, who was prepared to do anything and everything to get his way.  And he smiled at her, a certain hunger in his eyes.  “Good morning, Agent Romanoff.”

Natasha stood.  “Sir,” she greeted with a deadened tone.  Clint followed suit, his glare unabashedly threatening.  He was stiff with barely contained rage. 

Stern glanced between them.  “You look a little piqued this morning.”  His smile turned sleazy.  Greasy.  Natasha wanted to break his neck.  “Must be hard on you two, faced with this mess on your own.  You know, considering your training probably didn’t make you prepared to deal with something like this.  Since both of you were little more than SHIELD’s hired guns.”

He wasn’t even trying to be civil.  That was another sign that he thought he had them where he wanted them.  She wasn’t sure what game Stern was playing.  SHIELD was in shambles.  There were no secrets to be won from these hearings; everything was already exposed and out there in the ether of the internet.  Accountability?  There were certainly people interested in that, and maybe justifiably so, but she didn’t think Stern was one of them.  No, Stern was sizing her up, his eyes nothing short of hungry and lascivious as they roamed up and down her body.  Natasha had been ogled (and hurt) by men far more powerful than this snake before, so she held her ground easily.  “Is there something you wanted to say to me, Senator?”

“Not at the moment, no,” Stern said, his grin never dropping.  “But believe me.  I’ll get my chance.”  He turned to his entourage.  “Gentlemen?”  Stern gave one last anticipatory grin that bordered on feral before following his aides into the hearing room.  Honestly, he looked more like a warthog than a wolf.

Still, as Natasha watched him leave, she was unsettled.  It wasn’t just that the morning sickness was bothering her.  She got the distinct and disturbing impression that Stern knew something she didn’t.  That whatever he was after involved her.  She didn’t know the man at all, and, frankly, had SHIELD not fallen he would have never posed any sort of threat to her, political or otherwise.  Anxiety left her struggling anew for her composure.  “Slimy bastard,” Clint muttered disdainfully.  “He raked Maria over the coals yesterday.  Got off on it, too.”

“What does he want?” Natasha asked, watching Stern make his way down the aisle of the room, greeting other politicians and lawyers and military men with fake smiles and patronizing words.  He was veritably oozing fake geniality.

“Aside from publically humiliating us, who knows,” Clint answered from her side.  “Don’t worry about him.  He’s just a garden-variety asshole.”  Natasha tried to believe that.  Her nerves had been so rattled since SHIELD’s fall.  Fury had been assassinated for all intents and purposes.  Secretary Pierce had tried to label Steve a traitor and had used her against Steve and Steve against her.  The STRIKE Team had flat-out tried to kill them all, sadistically no less.  Clint had been forced to act as a Pierce’s loyal thug.  And the Winter Soldier was Steve’s best friend from his childhood.  The layers of betrayal had been complex and devastating.  SHIELD had been her life, her world, what she knew to be good and true.  And it had all been a lie.  Therefore, it wasn’t easy to dismiss the feeling of unease that left her heart beating just a bit faster and a touch of clammy sweat on the small of her back.  It wasn’t easy to ignore her doubts.

But she did, exhaling slowly before finally finding her calm again and tightly embracing it.  All of the horrible things she’d seen and done in her life…  She could handle this.  Clint’s callused fingers brushed minutely over hers, a tender, tiny touch that only she noticed.  “Ready?”

She nodded and stepped inside.

* * *

Natasha had seen actual firing squads in her life.  She was Russian, and the cruelty of Brushov and the others involved with the Red Room and the KGB really had known no bounds.  Public humiliation, punishment, and execution had been a favorite tool of many of the men to whom she’d deferred in her time as Brushov’s prized assassin.  A firing squad was the closest thing to which she could compare this.  Ten men, senators and generals and intelligence officers and advisors to the government, sat around a circular table with flags behind them and name plaques in front of them and cameras flashing all around them.  That was just further evidence that this hearing (and those preceding it) were more about political positioning than creating actual policy or discovering the truth.  Not that it mattered, because she couldn’t run or avoid it or stop it.  She’d been subpoenaed.  But she felt helpless, exposed.  Stripped bare for judgment and sentencing.  And even with Clint sitting supportively in the galley behind her, she felt alone.

“State your full name for the record,” directed the man who’d sworn her in.

There was no point in lying.  She’d made this decision to purge SHIELD’s secrets in order to reveal to the world HYDRA’s machinations.  And her secrets had been SHIELD’s secrets.  There was no going back.  “Natalia Alianovna Romanoff,” she replied firmly, her chin held high.

“Otherwise known as Natasha Romanoff,” Admiral Scudder said.  He was an older man with a long face, thin lips, and a hawkish nose, dressed in all of his naval finery.  He seemed completely humorless, and he regarded Natasha coldly.

“Yes,” she said.

“And Black Widow,” Stern threw in from the other side of the table.  He gave a hint of that same awful smile as before, not so much as to set anyone else’s suspicions off but enough to remind Natasha of their earlier conversation.  “Just for the record.”

She tightened her hands where they were folded together on her lap.  “Yes.”

“And, for the record,” Stern continued, the anxious son of a bitch, “you are a former agent of the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division, otherwise known as SHIELD.”

“Yes.”

Another of the men, a General Sanders who seemed even older and more cross than Scudder, leaned forward and braced his elbows on the table.  “We’ve heard sworn testimony from your associates, a Deputy Director of SHIELD Maria Hill and another agent of SHIELD Clinton Barton, about the events that led to the destruction of Project: Insight and the dismantling of SHIELD’s main headquarters located here in Washington, DC.  Their accounts have suggested that you played a principal role in this debacle, which has cost this nation billions of dollars in damages and the lives of more than a hundred people, including a significant number of your fellow agents and Secretary Alexander Pierce.”  _Be patient._  Natasha had been trained to wait, to restrain her reactions until the opportune moment to strike appeared.  It was so difficult right now.  “Now, there’s been a great deal of information spread onto the internet about what happened.  We’ve been led to believe that SHIELD was not what we thought it was.”

“That’s correct,” she said firmly.  “SHIELD was HYDRA.”

“By HYDRA, you are referring to a Nazi cult that existed during World War II,” Senator Wenham clarified.  Natasha knew very little about him, but of all the men gathered, he was the youngest and seemed the least threatening.  There was no disparaging or uncaring tone in his voice, just honest curiosity and a touch of incredulity.

In Wenham’s defense, it was hard to believe.  “Yes.  HYDRA has been part of SHIELD since its inception.  After the war, SHIELD was eager to recruit German scientists it believed could aid in its cause.  Among them was a man by the name of Arnim Zola.  He was the right hand man of the Red Skull, Johann Schmidt, the leader of HYDRA during the war, and he was also responsible for secretly plotting against world peace and security from inside SHIELD.”

“Yes,” Wenham said.  He pulled his reading glasses from his face.  “There was quite a bit of data concerning this individual in the files released by SHIELD on July 25th.”

“Agent Romanoff, according the records, Doctor Zola has been dead for forty years.  Yet both Agent Hill and Agent Barton have testified under oath that Project: Insight, spearheaded two years ago by Director Fury himself, was the work of HYDRA.  How can you account for that?” Scudder asked.

She was afraid they would ask these questions.  They were only logical, she supposed, but she wasn’t certain how well they, let alone most people, would accept the answers.  Would anyone believe she’d been told this crazy story by the ghost of a dead man programmed into an old computer deep in an abandoned army bunker in New Jersey?  She could hardly believe it herself.  The machine housing Zola in its outdated databanks was destroyed.  She had no proof of his existence beyond what they’d been able to dump from SHIELD during the attack on the Triskelion, and obviously these men were questioning the authenticity of those files.  More disturbing than that was the fact that HYDRA had reached into the United States government.  It hadn’t just been SHIELD that had been compromised.  If they wanted answers as to how HYDRA, long thought dead, had gotten its fingers into the cutting-edge technology promised by the Insight helicarriers, they were going to have to be open-minded and prepared to listen to things they didn’t want to hear.  “Secretary Pierce was the head of HYDRA within SHIELD.  He worked with numerous higher-level agents to coordinate HYDRA’s efforts to launch Project: Insight.”

“Which you and your colleagues claim was meant to destroy HYDRA’s enemies through a network of targeting satellites and an algorithm that could _predict_ the future,” Stern said, making no effort to hide his disbelief.  Natasha felt Clint stiffen even though he was numerous feet behind her.  At least he wasn’t dumb enough to try and defend Pierce.  The evidence against the dead HYDRA leader was pretty damning.  Instead, he turned his sights onto her.  “Isn’t it true that you routinely in your tenure as a SHIELD agent conducted unauthorized military operations on foreign soil?”

This was where they would try to trap her.  “They were authorized,” she corrected calmly, “by Director Fury and the World Security Council, which had jurisdiction over SHIELD’s activity.”

“Including an operation you ran with Agent Barton in Budapest in 2010 that led to a brawl in the streets where over fifty civilians were wounded in the crossfire?” Stern said.  He put on his reading glasses and made a show of leafing through some papers in a folder on the table before him.  “And another mission in Seoul that resulted in the destruction of nearly an entire city block?  Or another in Istanbul where the leader of a Turkish opposition party was assassinated?”  He didn’t give Natasha a chance to explain or defend herself.  “Or an operation just six months ago in which you and Captain Rogers illegally led a strike mission against two Russian ships, one in the Volga-Don canal and the other in Volgograd itself.”  Stern looked disgusted, setting the papers down and leaning back in his chair.  “The list of your transgressions is rather extensive.  It’s all in these reports that were declassified when you dumped SHIELD’s secrets onto the internet.”

She fought to keep her cool.  “And if you read those reports, you’ll see why Captain Rogers led that strike.  If he hadn’t–”

“The whole world would have been in danger.  Yes, we’ve heard that excuse from you and the rest of the Avengers before.  You don’t require oversight because you’re heroes.  Let me ask you this, Agent Romanoff.”  He folded his fingers together in front of him.  “What sort of hero shoots a national icon and almost kills him?”

Some part of her had maintained a vague hope that this wouldn’t come up.  She’d been a fool to even think it possible.  If Stern wanted to discredit her, this was the ultimate weapon.  Black Widow had participated in and personally executed dozens of high-profile assassinations.  She’d run black ops for SHIELD, stolen and destroyed private property, filled her ledger with so much red that it was nearly impossible to see anything else.  But shooting Steve at Brushov’s command in Russia…  That was beyond explanation and beyond redemption.  Even Steve hadn’t been able to let it go.  His harsh words filled her head again.  _“I forgave you for that.  I did.  It was hard, and it hurt, but I did it.  I forgave you.”_   Lies.  And if he hadn’t forgiven her, no one could.

But that was neither here nor there.  And frankly it was none of this bastard’s goddamn business.  _Hold it together.  Stay calm.  Answer._ “Captain Rogers exonerated me.  At the time I shot him…”  She hadn’t wanted to, had desperately tried not to, but her voice cracked and she faltered anyway.  _Hold it together!_ “I was under the influence of an extremely powerful psychotropic drug designed by General Yuri Brushov, an ex-KGB agent.  Those were General Brushov’s ships that Captain Rogers destroyed, and he did it to prevent the drug from being spread around the world.  The serum to which I was exposed limited my capacity to stop myself.  I wasn’t given it willingly.  Captain Rogers, as well as Agent Barton and Director Fury, noted all of this in their affidavits on the incident.”  It felt patently wrong to use the lies Steve had unwittingly told in her defense now (as it had then, too), but she had to.  Before Stern could continue, she folded her arms over her chest defiantly.  “I fail to see how this is relevant.”

“You don’t think shooting Captain America during a mission for SHIELD – or HYDRA, as you claim – is relevant?” Admiral Bryant asked.  He was another high-ranking official and Natasha knew he possessed serious clout on Capitol Hill.

Natasha forced herself to remain calm.  “Captain Rogers cleared me of any wrongdoing,” she repeated.  “He refused to press charges.  That should be enough.”

“How are we to know that this account of that incident is true?” Stern asked.  He was purposefully being argumentative, and she knew it.  “Captain Rogers isn’t here to confirm or deny your statements.  Perhaps in the world of international espionage, doing something like shooting a fellow agent and a commanding officer is common place.  In the real world, it’s called attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon.  The evidence in those reports you’re using like a shield is pretty clear-cut and damning.  You should have been arrested and imprisoned, if not for this than for dozens of other offenses.”

 _Yes, I should have._   “More to the point, Agent Romanoff,” Admiral Scudder said, “with this long list of criminal acts you’ve committed on behalf of SHIELD, the attempted murder of Captain Rogers included, how can we be certain _you_ are not HYDRA?”  He shook his head.  “If, as you say, HYDRA infiltrated SHIELD so completely that its best agents and its own director didn’t notice it, how are we to tell the lies from the truth?  What reason do we have to believe you?”

Natasha paused, struggling to summon forth some sort of answer to this.  Frankly, she didn’t have one.  So many things she’d done on behalf of SHIELD could have actually been part the greater plots of HYDRA, and that was unnerving, to say the least.  She’d had plenty of time over the last month to contemplate it.  The missions she’d completed.  The people she’d murdered.  The lies she’d told and the things she’d stolen.  How much of that had been for the wrong side?  For evil instead of good?  Steve had been right back in Crimea when he’d tried to stop her from stealing Brushov’s insanity serum.  Pierce had wanted it.  Fury had ordered her to get it.  And Steve had been the only one to see the whole thing for what it was: a lie to get more power into the hands of their enemies.

Steve had _seen_ it.  She thought he was naïve, loyal, and stubborn to a fault, but he was the one who’d realized what SHIELD was.  He was the one who’d stood against it.  And that was the answer to their question.  “Because I was following Captain Rogers’ orders, and he saw SHIELD was HYDRA,” she declared firmly.  “Are you questioning me or Captain America?”

If they were going to attempt to use Steve against her, she’d use him against them.  She felt slightly guilty about that, but not enough to let them best her.  Stern smiled faintly, a glint of smugness in his beady eyes.  “And you have no reason to lie for Captain America, do you, Agent Romanoff.”

It wasn’t a question.  She could hardly believe he’d be so bold.  And fear settled in the pit of her stomach like a thousand painful tons of ice.  “What are you implying, Senator?” she asked coolly, praying her face betrayed nothing of her disquiet.

“I’m not implying anything,” Stern said with scorn tight in his tone.  “You and Captain Rogers have a romantic relationship.  Do you deny that?”

She couldn’t.  She knew it was out there in the open.  She’d been worried about what her peers and colleagues at SHIELD would think of Captain America sleeping with Black Widow months ago before everything had gone to hell, but this was light-years beyond that in terms of the breadth of its consequences and the anxiety it was silently causing her.  The STRIKE Team had documented what had happened in Crimea and Russia, and those reports had of course been among the millions that had been spread across the internet.  Tony had been scouring the exobytes of data from SHIELD with powerful search algorithms, trying to find dangerous, interesting, or sensitive information and contain it again if possible.  The inventor had informed her that the snippets concerning her relationship with Steve were among the most popular news stories.  Even a month later, she knew hints of their romance were still trending through social media hubs and the twenty-four hour news networks.  The public seemed to have clung to this story, this hint of love between two of the most recognizable Avengers like some sort of bright spot in the midst of a terrible and terrifying tragedy.  Thankfully the fact that Natasha had shot Steve in those reports had somehow become separated from their love story; she wondered if Tony’s damage-control efforts were more effective than she realized.  With rumors and speculation still buzzing, she could only imagine the fall-out from this, from her answer to that question here and now.

She wasn’t going to lie.  Not about this.  She couldn’t anymore.  “Yes.”  _We have a romantic relationship.  Have or had._   She still loved Steve more than she could bear to admit to herself.  “We did.”

The murmur of intrigue and surprise in the galley was incredibly loud.  Stern looked positively triumphant.  “Since you two were hugely if not solely responsible for the disaster over the Potomac River, I want to know how that relationship affected your judgment then and if it’s continuing to do so now.  That’s entirely relevant to these proceedings.  Perhaps you’re defending him now because he dropped those charges against you.”

Natasha fought to keep her anger contained.  They had no idea how much their relationship had compromised her.  But she wasn’t going to fall into this trap.  And she wasn’t going to let them disparage Steve’s honor like that.  “That’s nonsense.  And be careful of what you’re saying, Senator.  With all due respect, you’re accusing Captain America of conspiracy.”

Bryant was quick to stop that argument from going forward, realizing perhaps that they were on thin ice.  Steve’s image was sacred to the American public, and President Ellis himself was a very firm supporter of him (and of the Avengers, for that matter).  “No one is accusing Captain America of anything,” he declared disarmingly.

“So just the obvious scapegoats, then.  Agent Barton.  Me.”  She couldn’t keep the vitriol from her tone.

“This is a chaotic situation, Agent Romanoff.  You are asking us to write off an entire intelligence agency and all of its impact in our world as evil,” one of the other men said.  Natasha didn’t even bother to look at his name plaque.  She was getting flustered, and she knew it.  “You have to appreciate that we need more than just your say-so or even Captain Rogers’ word.”

“You have SHIELD’s files,” she insisted.  “The answers are there.  HYDRA’s secrets are there.”

“Your checkered past does not broker much faith in that,” Scudder reminded sadly.  Natasha stiffened.  “This committee would like to know why we haven’t yet heard from Captain Rogers.”

She paused, struggling to keep her emotions in check.  It wasn’t that they didn’t trust her; Scudder was right.  There wasn’t much in her background that warranted faith.  It was that Steve was the one they wanted, the one who could convince them that the things in those files that married SHIELD to HYDRA and HYDRA to SHIELD were true.  And Steve _wasn’t there_.  Her stomach tightened and her throat burned.  Taking a deep breath was all she could do to keep everything in check.  “I don’t know what there is left for him to say that we haven’t told you.  Furthermore, I think the wreck in the middle of the Potomac made his point fairly eloquently.”

“Where is he?” Stern asked.

She bit the inside of her check hard enough to draw blood.  She didn’t know how to answer that.  She wanted to protect Steve.  She wanted to tell the truth because she was hurting so badly.  She wanted him back and she wanted him gone and she wanted…  She had no idea what she wanted.  “Captain Rogers took it upon himself to hunt down the remnants of HYDRA.”  It wasn’t a lie.  She couldn’t make herself explain further.  Not about the Winter Soldier.  Not about Bucky Barnes and the connection he had with Steve.

“He’s been subpoenaed,” Wenham reminded her.  “He has an obligation to appear before this committee.”

“He probably doesn’t know he’s been summoned.  He’s out of the country and out of communications.”

“You’ve had no contact with him?” Bryant asked incredulously.

It hurt too much to think about it.  “I think I just said that.”

“Convenient,” Stern declared.  Natasha turned to glare at him, but her harsh gaze did nothing to faze him.  “When do you expect his return?”

She swallowed thickly.  “I can’t answer that.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

She resisted the urge to be rude.  “I can’t answer,” she affirmed, saying each word slowly and forcefully.  “I’m not in contact with him.  I don’t know where he is or when he will be back.  All I can tell you is he’s still fighting against the evil HYDRA left behind.”

Scudder was not pleased.  He appraised Natasha coolly.  “Then would you care to explain on his behalf how this country’s expected to maintain its national security now that he and you have laid waste to our intelligence apparatus?”

Was no one listening?  “HYDRA was selling you lies, not intelligence.”

“Many of which, as Senator Stern correctly remarked, you had personal hand in telling,” Scudder returned.  The cameras flashed like mad.  “We have more data than we can possibly analyze, millions of reports spreading over the world like wildfire and some of them are so disturbing that they beggar belief.  I ask you again: can you differentiate for us which are lies and which are fact?  It would be prudent to know, since with SHIELD’s collapse you have exposed sensitive information about not only its operation but the operations of the World Security Council, NATO, and the dozens of foreign nations and intelligence agencies that were a part of its network, including the secrets of the United States.  Can you tell us which out of all these missions and operations–”  He gestured to the folders before him on the table.  “Which were the ones where you served our interests rather than theirs?”

It was impossible to do that, and she had a feeling they knew it.  “No.”

Senator Wenham leaned forward.  “Agent Romanoff, you should know that there are some sitting on this committee who would call that treason.  Perhaps Senator Stern–” Wenham glanced to his peer and (perhaps?) ally.  Apparently she hadn’t read him accurately at all.  “–is correct that, given your service record both for this country and against it, that you belong in a penitentiary, not mouthing off on Capitol Hill and continuing to evade delivering substantive answers as to who you are and what you’ve done.”

The cameras paused.  She knew why.  They were waiting to see what she would say.  How she would answer.  She pursed her lips, finding her strength, and lifted her chin.  “You’re not going to put me in prison.  You’re not going to put _any_ of us in prison.  Not Agent Barton.  Not Tony Stark.  Not Captain America.  You know why?”

Wenham was unappreciative of her tone.  “Do enlighten us.”

“Because you need us.  You need the Avengers.”  She shook her head, focused and sure of herself.  “You want to talk about evil?  You want to talk about losses?  We lost everything.  _Everything._ ”  She thought about her world crumbling down, the Insight helicarriers burning and falling into the river and taking down the Triskelion with them.  Fury lying dead in the morgue.  Clint’s haunted eyes and the shake of his hands when he thought no one was watching him.  Sam Wilson, thrust back into this dark and dangerous life.  Hill, floundering in the wake of the destruction, trying to find new footing.  Tony, struggling to keep their team together.  Steve, devastated.  _Devastated._   The way he’d held her and cried at her bedside when she’d been shot.  The way he’d looked when he’d told her he was leaving her.  She thought about the ache that never left her heart no matter how she tried to forget it.  The gaping hole in her life.  How very much they all had _lost_.  “But we still fought to protect all of you.  We picked ourselves up and went out there and got the job done.  There was collateral damage.  Things are more chaotic and uncertain today than they ever have been before.  But knowing what you do now, if Project: Insight had launched, do you think you’d be alive or have the freedom to question what happened like you are here?  Do you think you’d have a place in HYDRA’s new world order?”  The committee was silent, either in shock at her audacity or in contemplation of her words.  She didn’t care which.  She could only think of what Fury had said before he’d headed off to hunt down the rest of HYDRA.  “If the Avengers are the only thing that survives SHIELD, then you’re all luckier for it, because you _need_ us.  The world is a vulnerable place.  And, yes, we help make it that way.  But we’re also the ones best qualified to defend it.”

She let her words sink in before looking directly at Stern.  “So if you want to arrest me, arrest me.”  She narrowed her eyes.  “You know where to find me.”

Wenham looked completely flabbergasted.  Scudder and the other military officials seemed to be caught between disapproval and a touch of understanding, perhaps even appreciation.  Only Stern regarded her like an animal he’d cornered.  “Indeed we do, agent.  There’s enough evidence in those files you so foolishly exposed to all of us to crucify you.”

“So do it,” she challenged, her patience all but withered away.  “Do it, and see if Captain America lays down his life for this government ever again.”  She stood and walked away, flanked by the media desperately seeking pictures and comments.  Clint was there, keeping them away and following her from the meeting hall after shooting the men of the committee a harsh, warning glance.  Natasha hardly noticed.  It was wrong, but leveraging Steve against them felt so damn good that she didn’t regret it one bit.  Steve wouldn’t want his name and his loyalties used like this.  More than that, though, Steve wasn’t hers anymore, not to promise as she had.  But they didn’t know that.  And they didn’t know that Captain America was gone from himself as much as he was gone from her.  He was tortured.  Lost.  Broken, maybe beyond repair.  What she had said…  It was nothing more than an empty threat.

* * *

The Department of Defense hearing fell apart after she unceremoniously left it.  Still, Stern hung on, trying to maintain momentum inside the chamber even as their key witness returned to the uncomfortable bench out in the spacious hallway.  Security hadn’t permitted her to leave, which didn’t feel to be entirely legal, but she didn’t fight.  It was obvious Stern was trying to forestall his fishing expedition (or whatever this was) from prematurely concluding.  And it was more than obvious from the mass exodus of the committee members that his efforts were failing.  Clint looked infinitely pleased, almost downright smug, seeing the high-ranking generals and admirals filtering from the room.  Many of the observers were vacating as well.  As the long minutes wore on, thirty and then forty-five and then pushing an hour, even the media began to lose interest.  The most exciting and interesting of the day’s events had already come and gone, and the reporters scattered after Clint growled yet again that no one had anything to say, not about the fall of SHIELD or Director Fury’s assassination or Captain America’s whereabouts or Black Widow’s affair with the famous war hero.  “No goddamn comment,” Clint kept coldly snapping.  “Leave us alone.”

Eventually they did.  And then they were alone.  Clint didn’t waste a second.  His concern for her was practically seeping out of him, so thick and viscous that Natasha could practically feel it rolling warmly over her with each long, appraising look he gave her.  “You alright?”

She closed her eyes wearily, struggling through another inopportune bout of morning sickness.  She was simultaneously famished and about ready to lose it and throw up at any second.  “I’m fine, Clint.”

“You don’t look like it.  You haven’t for days.”

She wanted to tell him to drop it.  Snap at him and push him away and get him off her goddamn back.  But she didn’t, not even with her moods fluctuating as wildly as they were in that moment.  Truth be told, she just wanted…  She knew what she wanted.  But she couldn’t have it.  What she wanted was gone.  She’d let it go.

She wanted to cry.

There was the sound of heels clattering across the floor down the hallway.  Natasha idly traced the footsteps, realizing right away they were familiar, but it wasn’t until Hill was nearly in front of them that she managed to find the energy to open her eyes.  “Not your most cooperative moment,” she commented dryly, looking down on Natasha.  She was dressed in a pantsuit as well, navy blue and form-fitting, and her brown hair was sleekly pulled into a tight bun.  Her blue eyes analyzed Natasha in a blink, but if she noticed how worn down and out of sorts she was, she wisely chose not to mention it.  “Already the media is running with the idea of the Avengers going rogue.”

“That’s not what I meant to say at all,” Natasha returned tightly.

Clint’s glower hardened.  “What would they prefer?  We’d stayed under HYDRA?  Or we serve the government like some sort of glorified cops?”

“Yes,” Hill said evenly.

“Perfect,” Clint muttered, “and in the meantime we get hung out to dry.  You know, I’m getting kinda tired of being treated like a criminal for saving the world.  After New York, it was tolerable.  But this?”

Hill cocked an eyebrow.  “You want out, Hawkeye?  Now’s the time.”

Clint was visibly seething.  Still, after a moment of uncomfortable, angst-ridden silence, he got himself under control and cooled down.  He shook his head.  Natasha averted her gaze hotly.  Hill was cold and no-nonsense, but she wasn’t so heartless as to push further when it was obvious the two of them were low and rubbed raw and run ragged.  “I’m flying back to New York tonight.  Stark has some things he wants to discuss.  You two should probably join me.  How much longer are you needed for testimony?” she finally asked in a softer tone.

Natasha finally found it within herself to meet Maria’s gaze.  “I don’t know.  They haven’t let me go.”

Maria glanced to the nearly empty meeting hall.  “This is nonsense.  They can’t just keep you here.”

“Oh, I can.”  Stern’s voice cut through their quiet conversation.  The senator was exiting the meeting hall now, once again flanked by his aides and security personnel.  Natasha was becoming increasingly certain that all of this was for show.  Political posturing.  Intimidation.  “Trust me when I tell you that I can keep you here as long as I want.  There’s no one to protect you now.  All your secrets are exposed.  SHIELD is gone.  Director Fury is dead.”  Stern smiled smugly, taking a step closer to Natasha.  That hungry glint returned to his dark eyes, and his pudgy, ugly face twisted in glee.  “Captain Rogers is gone.  Not terribly smart of him, to leave you at your most vulnerable.”

A cold shiver itched at the base of her spine.  _You son of a bitch._   Did he know?  No.  There was no way he could.  _No one_ knew.  “What do you want?” she asked coolly, standing and folding her arms across her chest.

“I want you in my custody.”  Stern leaned back a little, regarding the other two SHIELD agents.  “I want all of you in custody.  You three.  Rogers.  Stark and Banner.  The Asgardian.  I want you playing for our team or neutralized.  You think you’re heroes?  You think after what happened we’re going to let you win?  Leave you to your own devices?”  He shook his head.  “You’re tools.  All of you.  Puppets.”  He gave a laugh.  “Shutting down HYDRA didn’t cut your strings.  You don’t even realize that you’re more tangled up in them now than ever before.”

Natasha kept her face completely impassive, even though her pulse had picked up and that icy shiver was now crawling up her back.  Stern took her lack of response as a sign that he was scaring her.  He might have if not for his ridiculous sneer and ugly face.  Natasha had faced down men far more powerful and frightening than this asshole.  “So you can either shut that pretty little mouth of yours, surrender, and cooperate with me, or I can throw you in jail and wait until Rogers comes to grovel at my feet to get you out.  Your choice.”  That conceited smirk splayed across his face again.  “He strikes me as the kind of man who’s willing to be submissive.”

That was it.  She’d damn well had it with the baiting and the insults and the power trip.  “You don’t know him,” she hissed, stepping into Stern’s personal space and relishing the sudden blast of fear in his eyes, “and you don’t know me.  So you know about my past.  You know what I’ve done.  Do you really think I’m vulnerable?”  She came even closer, catching a whiff of the man’s overpowering cologne.  Even that didn’t mask the scent of his sweat.  She kept her voice low, husky, but lined with a threat.  “Do you, Mr. Senator?”

“Mr. Senator?”

Stern was absolutely mortified and petrified, staring at her.  She never looked away, firm and powerful and every bit as beautiful and commanding as she knew she could be.  If this was a contest of wills, of images and lies and whatever else, she would win it.  He was a little man.  She was Black Widow.  She _destroyed_ men like him.

Someone cleared his throat.  “Mr. Senator.”

Stern finally looked away.  He was sweating bullets.  “What?  What?”

There were three men behind them.  One held open his badge, proclaiming them to be FBI agents.  They were stone-faced and obviously there on a mission.  “Senator Robert Stern.”

Stern was getting irritated.  “What?” he snapped.

The man with the badge closed it and stuffed it back into his pocket before grabbing some handcuffs from his belt.  “You’re under arrest by the authority of the United States Justice Department.”

Stern seemed positively flummoxed, like he couldn’t comprehend what they were saying.  He dumbly shook his head, his cheeks paling and his eyes widening, as the man pulled his hands behind his back and cuffed them.  “Wh-what?  What is this?  There’s gotta be some mistake!”

One of the other agents shook his head as his comrades flanked their prisoner.  “No mistake.  You have the right to remain silent.  Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.  You have the right to an attorney…”  As they dragged Stern down the hallway, their voices were faded, the man continuing to read Stern his rights over Stern’s pleas that they let him go.  The reporters who were loitering around, having taken a chance on there being more action, were now jolting closer, clambering for pictures and information.  The three former SHIELD agents watched the fiasco until it was gone and they were once again alone.

Clint was the first to speak.  “Wow.  What the hell?”  His voice was tinged with amusement.

“No idea.  But I guess that’s that,” Hill said, shaking her head.  Even she seemed relieved.  She turned back to her companions.  “Now what?”

Natasha didn’t smile, too angry to be happy about the fortuitous turn of events.  “Nothing.  Meeting adjourned,” she said stiffly before turning and heading down the hall toward freedom.

* * *

As it turned out, Stern was HYDRA.  That was more surprising than it should have been.  Apparently his office had made some effort to cover-up his relations with Agent Sitwell, but that had only delayed the inevitable.  The Justice Department had been picking through the files dumped onto the internet and had found a massive amount of evidence incriminating Stern.  He had been doing political favors for Secretary Pierce in return for protection for years.  His attempts to force Tony to turn Iron Man over to the government had really been an effort on the part of HYDRA to get a hold of Stark’s technology.  In retrospect, the fact that Stern had failed back then was even more of a godsend than they had realized.  When Maria reported all of this to Clint and Natasha, Clint adopted a dark scowl.  “I should have known,” he said angrily.  He shook his head, rolling his eyes slightly in frustration.  “The day the Winter Soldier shot Fury…  Fury was on his way to a meeting with Stern.  He was the one behind the setup.”

“Don’t beat yourself up over it,” Hill advised with a surprising amount of tenderness in her tone.  “It was a minor detail that was lost in the chaos.  And nothing came of this.  With Stern in the hot seat, you can bet the Armed Services Committee will back off.  Put some distance between them and him.  I’ve been on the line with Stark, and he says public opinion is strongly in our favor.  People want this put to rest.  They want to move on.”

“Wish it was that easy,” Clint murmured darkly as he drove them down the Capitol Beltway toward their hotel.  “So much goddamn fall-out.”  Natasha stared wearily out of the rear passenger window.  She couldn’t think.  Her mind was blank, wisps of words and thoughts and memories drifting around it but never coalescing into anything on which she could focus.  It was early afternoon, and Washington, DC was busy, the streets brimming with cars and pedestrians going about their daily business.  Oblivious to how close they had come to losing everything.  Unaware of the danger lurking right in their home.  HYDRA.  SHIELD.  The Avengers were scattered, and nothing was the same.  She’d lied to Stern about being vulnerable.  _So much fall-out._   She was worse than vulnerable.  She was hurting.  Exposed.  Compromised.  Lost.

_Call him.  Tell him about the baby.  Tell him to come home.  Home._

“Nat?”

Apparently she’d drifted, dozed as her mind had tumbled weightlessly, because they were back at the hotel.  Clint was looking back at her over the front seats of the SUV they’d rented.  His face was a picture of concern again, concern that he was doing nothing to hide.  “We’re here.  Are you getting out?”

Hill had already exited the passenger’s seat, and she was watching Natasha with worry in her eyes.  Misgiving and a touch of grief.  Natasha cursed herself for her lapse.  Her anger was hot, pushing away her weaknesses.  “Actually, there’s somewhere I want to go before we leave.  I’d like the car.”

Clint and Maria shared a look that Natasha easily read.  It prickled her ire even further, but she held it inside.  She wasn’t some goddamn invalid.  Everyone had been treating her that way since she’d been shot.  Since Steve had left her.  “You want me to drive you?” Clint asked.

“No,” she quickly and firmly replied.  “I’ll go myself.”

Clint looked like he wanted to argue, but Natasha’s cold, warning glare stayed his words.  He sighed, clearly unhappy, but got out of the car.  Natasha did as well, coming around to the driver’s side.  Maria stood at the hotel entrance, the bellman holding open the door for her.  “Stark is sending the jet.  It should be here at eight.”

“I’ll be back at seven then,” Natasha said.  She climbed in and afforded the two of them not another glance before putting the SUV into drive and heading off.  Her mind checked out as she drove, retreating into that comforting haze of apathy.  Her hands and feet seemed to know how to take her where she wanted to go, even if she wasn’t strictly paying attention.  About thirty minutes later, she pulled up to the brownstone and parked alongside it.  She turned the car off and opened the door, the first cool breezes of autumn brushing through her hair.  She got out, locked the car, and ventured inside the building before she could think twice.  A million memories prodded at the edge of her mind, tugging tenaciously to get her attention, but she stubbornly ignored them.  Her heels clacked loudly on the steps as she climbed them, one after another, concentrating on the fall of her feet as she went up to the right floor.  Her fingers slipped into her purse, searching fruitlessly for a moment before she found her set of keys.  And when she reached the door, so dark and idle, she gingerly slid the key into the lock and let herself in.

She closed the door softly behind her and leaned back against it.  She’d been in DC for three days, but she hadn’t come back here until now.  She needed her things.  She’d known it was going to be hard to come get them, and it was.  So hard.  Those million memories were strong now, very strong, and she couldn’t fight them.  This was home.  The home she’d had before HYDRA had destroyed it.  Steve’s apartment.  Hers.  _Home._

Someone, the STRIKE Team in all likelihood, had ransacked it looking for the USB drive with Zola’s algorithm on it that Steve had kept from Pierce.  Everything was a mess.  Furniture was smashed, shards of woods and glass littering the hardwood floors and rugs.  All of the books were dumped onto the floor; clearly someone had rifled through them.  The couch had been slashed, its upholstery ripped open and its innards pulled out in a cascade of white polyester.  Steve’s pictures were smashed and thrown on the floor.  Natasha shuddered just seeing it.  Everything he’d had was in shambles, in pieces.  Battered and broken and wrecked.

It took her a moment of her eyes roving over the damage in a numb sense of shock and grief before she managed the courage to step deeper inside.  Glass crunched under her shoes, glass from the coffee table, as she picked her way around the debris.  She glanced into the kitchen to find the cabinets emptied and dishes shattered on the floor and counters.  The stereo where Kitty Kallen had sung her song, the living room where they’d danced and the couch where they’d made love…  It was all destroyed.  She slipped on light feet down the hallway to the den to find it in much the same state as every other part of the apartment.  Books were ripped.  The TV screen was smashed.  The furniture was ruined.  Everything was trashed.  She felt mournful more than furious.  Again, she should have expected this, but she hadn’t.

Files from SHIELD were strewn everywhere.  Old records from SSR.  Papers were dumped on the floor in a pile, spilled from the desk.  Steve’s past just tossed about and left like garbage.  The sofa where they’d lay together and watched TV and chatted and kissed and shared each other…  Someone had taken a knife to this one, too.  The whirlwind of destruction continued into Steve’s bedroom.  The bed was unmade, the comforter and sheets dumped onto the floor.  They’d clearly lifted the mattress and dropped it because it wasn’t aligned properly on the bedframe and box spring.  Steve’s clothes were all over, yanked out of his drawers and closet.  She could hardly stand to see the mess.  Steve was a bit of a neat-freak.  His time in the army had only reinforced his innate desire for things to be orderly.  He’d hate this.

Natasha lingered in the doorway, lost and unfeeling, for quite some time.  This room…  She hadn’t realized until then what a safe haven it had been for her.  What a place of security and peace and contentment it had been.  This was where Steve had taught her how to love.  This was where he had peeled the layers of darkness away from her soul, kiss by kiss and caress by caress.  This was where he’d opened his arms and his heart to her.  All the times they’d slept together in his bed…  God, how she had taken that for granted.  That fantasy of theirs, the paradise of his home where the darkness in the world was so far away and unable to touch them…  She wanted that dream back so badly.

_Call him.  Tell him to come home.  Tell him you need him.  He’ll come if you tell him._

_No._

She moved, stepping inside carefully so as not to trod upon his things.  She supposed it didn’t matter; he wasn’t coming back here, and after this, neither was she.  And they were just things.  She looked around, finding her clothes unceremoniously tossed amongst his.  She knelt and grabbed a few of them, wiping glass free from her pants and folding them into her arms.  There was a stack of old papers on the floor near the bed.  She recognized them instantly.  Peggy Carter’s letters to him.  Peggy had written them over the years while Steve had been lost in the ice, precious words given to a long lost love.  Now they were ripped to shreds.  Tears burned Natasha’s eyes as she picked up the remains, the pretty scrawl of Peggy’s cursive writing torn and illegible.  It was useless.  There was no way she could put them back together.

The nausea reared its ugly head, probably brought on by the stress and emotion, and she was up and staggering toward the bathroom before she knew it.  She got there in time, but she held back, riding out the waves of queasiness bashing over her as she hunched over the toilet.  “Damn it,” she whispered, wiping at her eyes.  “Goddamn it!”  She was shaking, her heart pounding as she clung to her composure, swallowing down the burn of bile until she could straighten her form without the threat of vomiting.  A few deep, shaking breaths seemed to be helping, so she stood and waited and breathed.

When she finally got control over herself again and looked back to the bedroom, she caught sight of something glinting on the floor beside Steve’s dresser.  The drawers had been pulled free and dumped, but in the pile of socks and underwear, there was something metallic.  Curious, she went over to the mess and crouched, pawning through the clothes.  Sure enough, she found what had caught the light and her attention.  His dog tags.  She’d had no idea he’d still had them.  She held the simple, rectangular cards in her palm.  _“Rogers, Steven G.  37337566.”_   There were other letters embossed on the gray metal, a “C” for Catholic and “O” for bloodtype.  The place where his next of kin would have been stamped was blank.  She swept her thumb over them.  Then she clenched them tightly and stood.

She went to his closet, searching for a bag into which she could stuff her things.  Instead she found _him_ , his shirts and pants piled all over the floor.  Her fingers shook as she grabbed one of his sweatshirts where it was dangling on a hanger.  It was one of the few things still hanging.  A gray Dodgers one.  The cotton was plush and soft, and she pulled it close to her nose and breathed deeply of him.  She remembered lying on his chest when he’d been wearing it.  It had been right after he’d come home from SHIELD’s medical ward, right after they’d gotten together.  She’d helped him take a shower, supporting him and keeping him steady in the stall, washing his hair and his body because he’d been too stiff and in too much pain to do it himself.  Despite that, he’d teased her and smiled a dopey smile and stolen kisses as she toweled him dry.  Then she’d gone to his closet to find a pair of SHIELD issue navy blue sweats and this sweatshirt…  The memory was so vivid.  And after that, she’d helped him to his bed and curled up beside him, nuzzling into his warmth, breathing his clean, soapy scent and listening to his heartbeat and feeling his fingers slip through her hair.  _“Love you, Nat.  You have no idea how much.”_

She tasted the tears before she realized she was crying.  And once she started, she simply couldn’t stop.  It was too much.  She couldn’t do this by herself.  This last month of anguish, of anger and grief and fear and doubt…  It poured from her.  She staggered over to his empty bed, their upturned life, weeping silently into the soft fabric of his sweatshirt.  She collapsed onto the mattress even though it was bare and slashed.  Curling up, she buried herself into that damn hoodie and let the pain free.  She cried until she couldn’t anymore.  And then she fell asleep.

Long afternoon shadows were slipping in through the bedroom window when Natasha woke up.  For a moment, she couldn’t remember where she was or how she’d come to be there.  But then she breathed, and her hand still holding Steve’s dog tags went down to her belly.

She sighed, closing her eyes against a headache, and tried to clear her mind.  It was impossible to escape anything.  Not the fact that Steve was gone.  Not the fact that she was alone.  And not that fact that she was pregnant.  As she lay there, staring at the ceiling and _feeling_ Steve all around her and inside her, the same questions came from the back of her mind that she’d been ardently trying to ignore for weeks.  What was she going to do?  What was she _supposed_ to do?  The incredulity she’d felt when she’d learned she was pregnant was long gone.  So was the denial.  Now there was only the uncertainty.  The woman she’d been six months ago…  For her, this choice would have been a simple one.  End the pregnancy.  Brushov and the doctors of the Red Room had chemically sterilized her and the other assassins they had trained for one purpose: to prevent them from gaining emotional attachment to anything.  Forced infertility avoided the natural complications that came from wielding sex and seduction like weapons.  She wondered if those monsters had ever envisioned one of their girls having sex with Captain America.  Clearly not, because their procedure hadn’t been strong enough to stop this.

 _Terminate it.  Do it now before it becomes more difficult._ That was the logical course.  The _right_ course.  The only option.  She knew it in the depths of her mind, where the core of her training was still strong and intact.  Who she was and what she did…  There was no place in that life for a child.  And she was not fit and never would be fit to be a mother.  This was not just a new idea to her.  It was so foreign, so completely _alien_ , that she had no concept of what it even meant.  Never in her wildest thoughts had she even considered the possibility of a baby.  _Why are you now?  Why are you even thinking about this?  End it._   There was no way she could have this child.  No way.

Still, there was no way she could _not_ have it, either.

She sighed and made herself ignore that thought.  She always did.  Ignore her emotions, her heart, and focus on the cold, fast truths.  It would be nothing to end it.  A simple thing.  The baby was nothing now, a tiny clump of cells inside her body.  It was _nothing_.

But it was everything, too, because it was Steve’s.  And as alluring as aborting this pregnancy was because that was the easy and uncomplicated and natural course for her to take, it wasn’t _right_.  She was angry with Steve, so angry.  Angry that he’d left her.  Angry that he’d chosen Barnes over her.  Angry that he’d walked away and left this burden on her.  To hell with the fact that he didn’t know.  It was his goddamn fault, and she wanted to hurt him like he’d hurt her.  Part of her, the part that was suffering with rage and sorrow and that undeniable drive for self-preservation, the part of her that was _alone,_ wanted to end the pregnancy now without ever even telling him.  Without him knowing.

Just the thought made her start to cry again.  How could she even consider doing that to him?  To herself?  To their child?

 _It’s not your child.  It’s a problem, and you need to deal with it now while you still can._   No one knew aside from Doctor Fine, but that wouldn’t last.  The longer she delayed and contemplated and uselessly weighed her choices, the fewer choices she would end up having.  As she lay there, half blanketed by Steve’s sweatshirt with his dog tags tight in her hand, her hand that was laying protectively over her lower stomach, the same unwillingness to make any decision dragged all of her thoughts back into complete lethargy.  This wasn’t like her, procrastination and failure to truly understand her mission, the best course of action.  But it was, too, because she wasn’t who she had been.  SHIELD was gone, but she was still Black Widow.  Steve was gone, too, but she was still in love with him.  She came here, after all, convincing herself of some nonsense about needing to get her things, but that was just an excuse.  Here she was, lying on his bed and crying and yearning in a way of which she’d never even imagined herself capable.  Caressing the cradle of her womb where his baby was inside her.  She hadn’t let herself touch it like this until now, hadn’t let herself think of it like this since Doctor Fine had told her.  It was her child.  And his.  Their child.

It was _everything_.

She was making herself tired and dizzy with these useless, circular thoughts, so she stopped.  She still didn’t know what to do.  So she decided not to do anything.  She’d think more about it later.  In New York.  It wasn’t rational, but she made herself believe things would be clearer there.  She’d figure it out later.  It was getting late, and she needed to go.  She climbed out of their bed.  She lifted his sweatshirt to her face again, closing her eyes and taking a last breath of it, before laying it down.

The dog tags she kept, though.  She looked down at them where they were still clenched in her fist.  She opened her palm, once more running her thumb over them.  Before she thought to do it, she was draping them over her own neck and tucking them down into her blouse over her heart.  They were all she was going to take.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE:** Thank you all so much for the comments! So excited to see people enjoying this series! :-)
> 
> So, uh, remember when I said a lighter, happier story? Yeah… Not this chapter. Warnings for general unpleasantness and unhappiness and disturbing imagery and situations. Steve's in a really dark place. Poor baby.

Steve couldn’t see.  The world wasn’t dark exactly.  There was light, but it was hazy and dim.  Foggy, almost, a thick, soupy, gray mist that was surrounding him.  There was nothing inside it.  No things.  No people.  A void of swirling slate.  He turned around, peering into the clouds that encased him.  Where was he?  What the hell was this?

_Where am I?_

“Steve.”

A man appeared through the fog.  It was Bucky.  Bucky was wearing his old blue coat, the coat he’d worn through the war, with his hair neatly cut and styled back, a rakish bang falling onto his brow.  He had his rifle over his chest.  “It’s this way.”

Steve didn’t understand.  “What’s this way?”

“Come on!”  Bucky turned and ran.

Fear jolted Steve like a harsh slap.  “Wait.  Wait!  Bucky!”  Bucky was already gone into the fog, swallowed whole by it.  Steve ran after him.  His shoes thundered on the ground, the ground that was hidden and formless.  His heart thundered, and terror and panic rent it.  “Stop!  Bucky!”  No one answered but himself.  His voice echoed in the vortex.  “Bucky!  Bucky!  Where are you?”  Steve drew to a frustrated halt.  Where he was now was no different from where he’d been before.  He whirled desperately, searching the fog for some sign of Bucky, of anyone or anything, but there was nothing.  He choked on his breath, his wide in horror.  He couldn’t have lost him!  “Bucky!  _Bucky!_ ”

“Over here, Cap!”  Steve spun on his heels, his sharp hearing immediately localizing the source of the voice behind him.  He ran fast, forcing everything he could out of himself, cutting through the mist.  It twisted and turned around him, forming little eddies as he disrupted it, like coils trying to grab at him and hold him back.  “Cap!  Hurry!”

“I’m coming!”  There were figures – _Bucky?_ – in the fog now.  Indistinct shadows that could have been men but seemed more like phantoms.  The ghosts shifted, apparitions sliding among the curtains of gray.  There were voices, too.  He couldn’t understand what they were saying because they were faint.  But they were familiar.  _Dum Dum?  Gabe?_   Blue burst beyond him, a hue the clouds, raking the fog like lightning.  Gunfire and screaming.  Things being destroyed.  The battle being lost.  _HYDRA._   “Bucky!  Bucky!”

He staggered forward, searching and searching because – _Bucky_ – his men were out there and they were being slaughtered and he couldn’t get to them.  “Hang on, Bucky!  I’m coming!”  But his voice only echoed against distant things, bouncing back at him with all the force of a clap of thunder.  The figures faded, and Steve couldn’t contain a cry of rage.  He ran harder, faster.  He wasn’t going to give up.  He never gave up.  He couldn’t let Bucky go.  Not again.  Not ever again.  Bucky needed him.  _Bucky needed him._

He reached for his shield.

His shield wasn’t there.

Steve skidded to a halt.  There was nothing on his back.  His shield was gone.

A low laugh echoed through the fog.  Steve spun again, darting his wide eyes uselessly about but finding only that unending swirl of deep and dark gray.  The chuckle came again, seeming from all around him.  He felt naked.  Exposed.  He didn’t have his shield.  How could he fight?  _He didn’t have his shield._

“Did you think you could defeat us, Captain?”  Steve fell into a defensive stance.  That voice.  He knew it, too.  Heavily accented and twisted with hatred and madness.  _The Red Skull._   “Did you?  I warned you once about arrogance.  Yours seemingly knows no bounds.  You come here with nothing.  Nothing and no one, trying to fight an enemy that cannot be stopped.  Cut off one head, and two more shall take its place.  Forever.”

Another voice.  This one softer, more hidden in fake gentility.  _Pierce._ “I told you.  Captain America and everything he symbolizes is dead.”  Steve panted, chest heaving, frantically looking for his enemies.  God, he was surrounded, and he couldn’t see them.  He couldn’t see them!  “It’s time you realign your values.  Fight for us.  It’s inevitable.”

“You can still be the perfect soldier.”  _Brushov._   “One not beset by such pathetic virtue.  We can turn you to our side.”

“No,” Steve said through gritted teeth.  “No!”

“No?”  The Red Skull laughed cruelly.  “You’re already broken.  You’ve lost everything.  _Everything._ ”

Brushov’s voice was a taunting sneer.  “We took it.  What you love.  What you couldn’t save.  Your friend.  Natalia.  She was never yours to begin with.”

Before Steve could argue with that, Pierce was speaking again.  “You know what the really sad part is, Captain?”  Steve could practically hear Pierce’s sinister smile.  That same smile he’d worn when he’d watched the Winter Soldier torture him.  Shivers ran down his back, and he whirled _again_ , but there was still nothing.  _Nothing._   “We’ve always had them.  You’ve been fooling yourself.  SHIELD.  Romanoff.  Barnes.  They’ve been ours, and you’ve been living a lie.”

“You’re the one who’s lying!” Steve shouted, his voice cracking in mounting desperation.  “You’re lying!”

“What do we need to do convince you?” Pierce asked conceitedly.  “All the chances we’ve given you to see it, and still you never see it.  You’re really pathetic, Captain.  Stripped bare, and yet still you try to stand against us.”

“Erskine’s greatest accomplishment,” Schmidt spat, “and also his greatest failure.  Damned by his own weaknesses.”

“Compassion is weakness,” Brushov agreed.  “Love even more so.  A weak man can never be anything other than a weak man.  And you are a weak man, Captain.”

“So weak you lost your shield,” Pierce said matter-of-factly.  “But you don’t need it to fight for us.  And you will once you see the truth.  Nothing else turned you, but this will.”

Steve roared, _“No!”_

“Yes.”  There was a breath against the back of his neck, and Steve spun, swinging out with his fist.  But the source of the voice wasn’t there.  And that breath ghosted over him again, like a wisp of the fog sickly caressing his skin, and he reeled and stumbled.  “Come on, Cap.  You want to fight me?  Get up.”  Steve scrambled back, scooting across the ground.  His heart was pounding in his throat.  He could barely breathe, terrified.  He knew that voice, too.  _Rumlow._   “Get up, you piece of shit.  Get up!”

His back hit something with form and substance.  Something hard and stiff and unmoving.  He turned, rolling onto his knees, but there was a gun in his face.  Clint stared down it at him, with a lax face and dead eyes.  Soulless eyes.  His skin seemed very white, his lips pulled thin into a frown.  “Get up, Cap.”  His finger tightened on the trigger of the gun.  “Come on.  It’s time.  Time for you to see the truth.”

Steve shook his head.  “Clint,” he stammered.  “Please, I don’t–”

Hands balled into his shirt, yanking roughly with strength that seemed impossible and unnatural.  The fabric ripped.  “Get the fuck onto your feet,” Rumlow snarled, hauling Steve upward.  The other man’s eyes burned red and they were right in Steve’s face, glowering with hate and power and the promise of vicious violence.  Rumlow’s lips twisted into feral smile, his eyebrows cocked with enjoyment.  “You’re coming with us.”

“No!  No!”

“Walk!” Rumlow snapped, shoving Steve away from him and into the fog.  He drew another gun and jabbed the hot barrel of it into the back of Steve’s neck.  Clint shoved his into Steve’s ribs.  “You want to fight us?”  He laughed.  “No shield, Cap.  No nothing.  So walk.  Walk!”

“It’s this way,” Clint calmly declared.  “This way.”

Steve closed his eyes against the hot burn of tears as he was pushed through the fog.  He didn’t know where they were taking him.  He kept his hands up and his eyes down on his feet, terrified.  There were other things echoing through the mist.  Men laughing.  The sound of flesh striking flesh.  Wordless taunts.  Screams.  Steve realized after a moment that those screams were his own.  Where the hell were they taking him?  _Where?_

“Pierce says you deserve to see the truth,” Clint said.  “So that’s where you’re going.”

“What truth?” Steve gasped.  He found the courage to look behind him and was rewarded with a blow across the face.  Pain lanceted up and down his side.  His leg.  His back.  Blows from faceless demons descended him, and the fog held him down.  He couldn’t fight back.  The mist was on him, blanketing him, syphoning the strength from his muscles, slipping into his lungs and burning him like poison.  And then he was back there, back in that hell where they were holding him to the floor and brutally beating him.  _No, no, no!_ “What truth?” he demanded.  “What truth?  What truth?”

“Let him up,” Clint coolly ordered.  “Not until he sees.”

“What truth?  Answer me, goddamn it!”

Rumlow’s hand was harsh in his hair.  “You want to see?  We’ll show you.”

He dragged Steve by the hair, literally _dragged_ him like he weighed nothing and was nothing and wasn’t struggling and _why can’t I get away?_   Steve dug his heels into the ground and clawed at the earth, but nothing provided any purchase or means to escape.  He was helpless.  _Helpless._   And Clint was following, looking down on him uncaringly, his gun still aimed at Steve’s chest.  “Time for you to see the truth,” he kept muttering.  Steve wasn’t sure if it was to him or to himself.  “Time for you to see.  It’s time.”

Suddenly Rumlow dropped him.  Steve tried to get to his feet, but Rumlow kicked him down again.  Rumlow crouched beside him, leveraging all of his _(how is this possible?)_ strength against him and drove him into the ground.  That foul, heated breath was against his cheek as Rumlow dug his knee into his back and _pushed hard._   Steve cried out, flailing uselessly.  “Okay, we’re here.  Now take a look.”

The weight was gone.  The cruel hands released him.  Steve looked up.

The fog parted.

Natasha stood there.  She was breathtakingly beautiful.  Her hair was as red as blood, her skin soft and white, and the black leather of her uniform hugged her lithe body perfectly.  Steve wanted to run to her, relief and desperation for her touch and comfort beating through him with every pulse of his heart.  But she looked down at him – _looked down on him_ – uncaringly.  And then her lips twisted into half a sadistic smile.  “You come to get what you want?” she asked.

“Nat?” he whispered.  He crawled onto his knees, mouth hanging limply open and eyes wide with shock.  He didn’t understand.  “Nat, what’re you–”

It was Clint who pulled him to his feet and shoved him unceremoniously at her.  Steve stumbled, barely catching himself.  That grin stayed on her face, but it never reached her eyes.  Her eyes were…  There was madness there.  He’d seen it before.  Madness and lust and cruelty.  A desire for power.  _Insanity._   “This is what you want,” she said lowly, sweeping her hands down her body.  “Isn’t it?”  He still didn’t understand, because this couldn’t be right.  It couldn’t be real.  It wasn’t–  “You can have it, you know, if you cooperate.  Submit.  Just like I did.  Just like they did.”

“Just like…”

From the fog, a shadow stalked closer.  A man dressed in black.  A metal arm clenched into a fist.  A stranger wearing his best friend’s face.  The Winter Soldier.  Natasha’s lips curled at their edges, and her gaze turned vicious as she reached back her hand.  The Winter Soldier came to her like a dog summoned by its mistress.  He draped that metal arm around Natasha’s midsection, and she slid her fingers along it.  Feathery light, like they were dancing.  Like she’d done to Steve in his embrace countless times before.  She didn’t waste any time after that, turning and kissing the Winter Soldier passionately, tangling her hands into the mussed brown locks of his hair tightly.  Horror clenched Steve’s belly, horror and rage and _jealousy_.  Betrayal.  She deepened the kiss to the point where it was almost lewd, sliding her tongue along the Winter Soldier’s lips, pressing herself tightly to him, cupping his unshaven jaw.  He grabbed her, caressed her, with the steel fingers.  She let him, encouraged him.  Steve could hardly stand to watch.

When she finally pulled away, that evil smirk was back.  She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand and then smiled and gestured for Clint.  He came closer, again like some obedient goddamn _slave_.  She grabbed his face, but Steve looked away before she could kiss him.  _Not this.  This isn’t…  It’s not…_

“It’s the truth,” Natasha hissed.  “Aren’t you going to look?”

“No!”

She growled in anger and shoved Clint away.  Clint went back to Steve’s side, shoving his gun into his back.  Rumlow did as well.  Bucky, too.  _Bucky._   His hands pulled behind him.  She was there before he even realized that she’d moved, right in front of him, taking his face now in her hands and lifting it so he had to look her in the eye.  There was no love there.  No respect.  The cold visage of an uncaring temptress.  _Black Widow._   “This is the truth,” she said again, lowly.  Steve shuddered as she ran her fingers lightly up his heaving chest.  “What you need to see because you’re still so blind.  So blind and weak and naïve.  I told you, but you didn’t listen.  Want me to tell you again?”  She smiled that sultry smile of hers, the one he adored, the one that sent heat straight to his groin.  “I knew about him.  I knew who he was, and I didn’t tell you.”  She stood on her toes to whisper in his ear.  “And I fucked him.”

Steve wrenched his arm free and pushed her away, but she came back hard and fast, kissing him roughly.  It was all her delving tongue and their clashing teeth, painful and angry with twisted desire.  It was a perversion of everything they’d shared.  It was that moment aboard Brushov’s ship all over again when they’d fought and he’d barely gotten through the hell of the insanity serum to reach her.  Her hands were on him, all over him, grabbing at his pants and ripping his shirt open.  “I liked it.”  She was demanding and possessive, like every good part of her, everything pure and giving and noble, had been stripped away.  Only the evil remained, the evil put there by the Red Room.  She bit his lower lip hard and sucked at it and drove her hand down his unzipped jeans.  He shoved her back again.  “What?” she said, shaking her head and smiling at him like she couldn’t believe he’d deny her.  “Don’t you want me now?”  He didn’t know what to say.  She did.  She knew exactly how to hurt him.  “You did.  You wanted me so bad that you forgot all about who I am and what I do.  You thought I was someone good.  Someone you could love.  Someone who loved you.”

“This isn’t you, Natasha,” he gasped finally.  “This isn’t you.  I know you.  You love me.  I know you do.  I know it!  This isn’t you!”

She laughed cruelly.  “Of all the men I’ve had, Rogers, you are _by far_ the most pathetic.  At least before this you were Captain America.  Something I could use.  Something fun to play with.  Now you’re _nothing._ ”

“Why are you doing this?” he asked.  His eyes burned and burned.  “Why?  Why?”  She just grinned.  He couldn’t contain his pain.  _“Why are you doing this to me?”_

“Because you were easy.  And available.  And I was your first.”  Steve bit down hard enough on his tongue to draw blood.  “Because you walked away from me.  Because you left me.  Because you did _this_ to me.”  She unzipped the front of her uniform, and he expected to see the curves of her breasts but his eyes were immediately glued to the bullet hole in her chest just below her sternum.  It was angry and red and weeping blood.  It dripped down her stomach.  “But I guess turn-about’s fair play.”  Steve felt heat seeping into the tattered remains of his shirt, and he looked down, aghast, to see blood pouring from his chest again.  From his heart.  _Because she’d shot him._

He wailed a ragged cry, and his hand immediately went up to press over the bullet wound.  But the Winter Soldier grabbed his wrist and yanked it away so that he could bleed out.  Bleed to death.  _So much red._   Clint and Rumlow held him tightly.  Natasha zipped her uniform back up enough to hide the wound.  She sauntered closer.  She grabbed his shaking hand where the Winter Soldier was restraining it and pulled it to her chest.  Steve tried to fight, his red-slicked fingers trembling with the effort, but between the Winter Soldier’s strength and Natasha’s, he was overpowered.  He always was.  He could never be strong enough, good enough.  She pressed his palm over her heart, between the swell of her breasts, and closed her eyes, grinning.  “You wanted this,” she whispered.  “You wanted this.  You wanted it.  You wanted me.”

Steve choked on a gasp.  The agony was overwhelming.  “Yes.”

“Do you still want me, even like this?”

“Yes!”

“Then you’re stupider than I thought.  And you’re still not seeing the truth.  You want to see it?”  He didn’t.  But she was going to show him anyway.  The fog faded, faded entirely like a wind had come through and blown it all back.  They were all there watching.  Stark and Banner.  Thor and Loki.  Hill and Sitwell.  The STRIKE Team and Rollins and Ramirez.  Rumlow went to stand with them, glaring hatefully.  Sharon Carter was there, too, her eyes cold and judgmental.  Coulson.  Fury.  Hundreds of SHIELD agents who he knew or with whom he’d worked.  So many.  Everyone he’d known in the future.  Thousands of people.  _Everyone._   “This is HYDRA.  We’re _all_ HYDRA.  We always have been.  Everything you thought you were protecting…  It was all a lie.”  She sneered at him.  “You died for nothing, Steve.”

The Winter Soldier was still holding him upright.  If he hadn’t been, Steve would have collapsed in despair.  Clint hooked an arm through his and dragged him closer to Natasha.  “You died for nothing,” Natasha said again.  She let go of his hand and took his face in her palms again, wiping his tears with the pads of her thumbs.  “And you know what?  It’s not even sad.  It’s just fitting.”  She kissed him again, this time more tenderly.  But it was full of condescension rather than love.  She was placating him, and he was lost and desperate.  She seemed to kiss him forever, tenderly prodding at the seam of lips and coaxing his mouth open.  He surrendered just to feel something other than pain.

“So this is it, baby,” she finally whispered against jaw, kissing down his face with false reverence.  “You’re mine, and I’m theirs.  You can’t save me.  Can’t change me.  Never could.”  He groaned against her as she caressed his chest.  “They want you.  You’re the only one left, Steve.  The only one standing against them.  The perfect soldier, fighting to the last.  They want you, and I’m going to give you to them.”  She gave a sick, hungry smile.  “I want you down on your knees.  I want you to beg to serve them.  Hail HYDRA.  Can you say that?”

He could hardly breathe.  Her hands were skirting down his body again, liquid fire following her fingers down the planes of his chest and stomach, reaching into his jeans.  “Come on, Steve.  Say it.  I know you can do it.  Say it and you can have me just like you want me.  Say it like Bucky said it.”  He wrenched away, but they wouldn’t let him.  Her hands were insistent, and her kiss turned demanding and possessive.  “You have to say it if you want me.  Say it if you love me.”

“No,” he moaned.  “I can’t…  No!”

 _“Say it!”_ she screamed.

“Hail HYDRA,” he whispered.  The words were out before he even thought to speak.  They were fueled by pleasure, by pain, by complete submission.  Devastation.  She was right about him.  No matter what she’d done and how she’d hurt him, he wanted her.  He loved her.  And he’d do anything for her. 

Pierce was right.  Natasha was, too.  He really was pathetic.

Clint let him go.  So did the Winter Soldier.  He went down hard on his knees in defeat, shaking and suffering and bleeding.  The two of them came to flank Natasha.  Clint handed her his gun.  For her own part, Natasha looked down on him in pity.  She clucked her tongue at him.  “I guess Captain America’s dead after all.”  _I guess so._   “And I lied to you, baby.  No one wants you.  A weak man can only ever be a weak man.”

He thought he heard the Red Skull laughing.

Natasha lifted the gun.  “You want to shoot him in the heart this time?” she asked Bucky.

“Doesn’t matter,” Bucky answered, his voice empty and his eyes dead.

Steve finally looked up, finally tried to fight.  But he couldn’t move as they aimed their guns at him.  He couldn’t move because someone was behind him, someone warm and soft.  Strong arms wrapped around him, pinning his to his sides, and a warm breath tickled his ear.  “It’s alright, Steve,” Peggy whispered.  “I promise you won’t wake up again.”

The guns went off.

Steve lurched forward.  A loud, ragged cry burst from his lips.

“Jesus, Steve!  Are you okay?”

He wasn’t.  God, he wasn’t.  Steve couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think or move or make sense of _anything_.  Where the hell was he?  Where where _where?_

Then his addled brain broke free of the nightmare and finally supplied an answer.  _In the car.  You’re safe.  Just fell asleep.  In the car.  In the car._   That repeated over and over again in his head, like a mantra meant to force the thought to stick, to force his brutalized mind to accept it.  _In the car.  In the car.  You’re safe.  It’s just Sam.  Sam._

And it was just Sam.  Sam was driving the truck they’d rented Kiev.  They’d been travelling for most of the day west since their trail had run cold in the Ukraine.  The dossier on the Winter Soldier Hill had somehow gotten from contacts there had suggested a few affiliated locations across Austria, Germany, and Switzerland, and they’d chosen exploring the one outside of Zürich first.  Sam had offered to drive a significant portion of the way so Steve could sleep.  Apparently that had been a hell of a mistake.

Steve couldn’t get his breathing under control and his body to stop shivering.  Sam swung his arm across the front of the truck to brace it across Steve’s chest.  His reaction was immediate.  He stiffened and tried to move away, but he was so dazed and shaken that he didn’t put much of his normally immeasurable strength behind it and Sam held fast.  “Easy,” he said softly, calmly.  He glanced at Steve from the corner of his eye, gripping the steering wheel tightly.  “Easy, man.  It’s just me.”

 _Just Sam.  You’re safe.  It’s alright.  Alright._   He couldn’t make himself believe that, no matter how many times the words echoed in his head.  He was still back there, back on his knees with Natasha and Bucky looking down on him with their guns to his body and hate in their eyes.  “Holy hell,” he whispered, finally finding it within himself to exhale slowly.  “God.”

Sam let him have a few more seconds (which he desperately needed) to compose himself.  Then he quietly asked, “You alright?”

He couldn’t answer.  He licked his lips, his lips that tasted like blood from where he’d worried them with his teeth (when he’d been sleeping?  Or before?  He couldn’t remember).  He managed another deep breath, and another, and then the rapid-fire race of his heart finally eased and his muscles relaxed.  “Yeah,” he said.  “’m okay.”

Sam didn’t look convinced.  Sam never did, hadn’t since they’d left the States a month ago.  Steve was wondering how much longer his friend was going to keep buying his lies.  He wasn’t even buying them himself.  An awkward moment of tense silence came between them, Sam trading looks between him and the road.  “Must have been a helluva nightmare.”

Steve couldn’t find his voice.  He couldn’t even make himself think about it, the grotesque horror of it too close and fresh.  He brought up shaking hands to wipe the sweat from his forehead, digging the heels of his palms into his eyes like the pressure could push the image of Natasha taunting and torturing him like that out of his head.  “Where are we?” he finally asked.  His voice was rough and alien to his ears and void of any of his normal strength and confidence.

“Couple hours out,” Sam answered.  “You wanna talk about it?”  Steve didn’t think he could.  He shook his head, shifting in the passenger seat, looking down on his hands when they fell to grasp his knees tightly.  Sam wasn’t satisfied, of course.  Not this time.  He’d been prodding for days, trying to get Steve to open up.  Sam was a good friend, probably the best Steve had ever had aside from Bucky and Natasha, and he deserved better than Steve’s moodiness.  But he wasn’t strong enough to force himself to admit to himself how battered and broken he was inside, let alone admit it to anyone else.  When the silence dragged on, Sam sighed.  “Steve, look.  I told you I’d help you find him, and I will.  I’m not backing out.  I won’t.  But for Christ’s sake, dude…  You’re scaring me.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve murmured.

“Don’t apologize.  Just stop and think.  You don’t need to do this.”

Steve shook his head.  “Yes, I do,” he said.  He closed his eyes, and all he could see was Bucky slipping from his reaching fingers and falling from the train.  Bucky dangling from his hand over the Insight Bay flooding beneath them.  Both times he’d let him go.  Both times he’d failed Bucky when Bucky had _never_ failed him.  “You have no idea how much I do.”

Sam wisely chose not to argue with that.  There was no way he could know, because despite travelling together for nearly a month, Steve never talked about Bucky.  Not about their past, their childhoods in Brooklyn.  Not about how Bucky had taken care of him, protected him, picked him up when he’d fallen and stayed with him when he’d been sick, been his _friend_ when no one else would even at great cost to himself.  Not about how Bucky had kept the bullies away, had always seen worth in him even when he hadn’t seen it himself.  And not about their time together during the war, when Bucky had always stood strong by his side, had his back, let him be Steve Rogers every once in a while when the world had constantly demanded Captain America…  Everything was wrong.  This was the stuff of nightmares, _his_ nightmares.  Bucky torturing him.  Bucky stabbing him, hitting him, interrogating him without a hint of recognition in his hollow, cold eyes.  Bucky hating him.  Bucky blaming him.  Bucky shooting him, and Bucky shooting Natasha.  Steve couldn’t talk about any of it, because it hurt so damn much that a man he’d known all his life and loved like his own brother had been twisted and turned into his enemy.

Sam sighed after a long moment.  “Even if you do need to find him and bring him back, it doesn’t have to be now.  This whole fucked up situation is like ten pay grades above me, but I’ve seen enough soldiers suffering with stuff like this to know you need help.  You need time to rest and sort this out.  And you need to go home to Natasha.”

“No,” he said weakly.  God, that hurt.  He’d thought about it.  He’d been thinking about it _a lot_ since they’d left.  The urge to do it was nearly overwhelming.  He felt the weight of his StarkPhone in the front pocket of his sweatshirt, a comforting weight, an alluring weight.  _Just call her.  Tell her you’re coming home.  Go to her._

But the image of her glaring at him so condescendingly, of her kissing Bucky and kissing Clint…  It tormented him.  He couldn’t bring himself to do it, even if he knew that was all a lie.  He couldn’t.

“You haven’t slept more than a couple of hours at a time in three weeks.  You look like hell.  You’re in pain.  You’re _scaring_ me.”  Sam flicked the windshield wipers on as it started to rain.  Steve watched them go back and forth.  Back and forth.  Lulling.  God, he was tired.  “You’re talking in your sleep, you know.  You’re always crying for her.”  He flinched.  “You need to go back.  You need her.”

“I can’t, Sam.”

“Why not?  What happened?”  That had been another question Sam had been itching to ask over these last couple of weeks.  Sam was smart, and he was extremely perceptive.  He’d known immediately that Steve and Natasha were at odds with each other, that they’d parted ways on strained terms.  But he hadn’t brought it up at first, wanting to give Steve some privacy.  Steve wasn’t blind to his own state; he was pretty acutely aware of how much he had deteriorated over the last couple of weeks.  Failure upon failure to find any sign of Bucky down in DC had frustrated and hurt him.  Failure to find a warm trail in Europe had hurt and frustrated him even more.  And now they were hunting down ghosts, fifty year old HYDRA demons in some desperate attempt to glean a clue as to where to look next.  As they’d sunk deeper into their quest, the nightmares had started to compound upon each other.  Emotional fatigue married with physical exhaustion, and Steve felt so scraped raw and run down that he knew he looked like he was one step from collapse.  He looked like that because it was true.

_You keep going.  Keep fighting.  Keep looking.  You’re Captain America, and you don’t quit._

_Bullshit._ He wasn’t Captain America anymore.  Pierce’s words filled his head anew.  _“Captain America and everything he symbolizes is dead.”_   And with that, the flood of the nightmare banged against the walls he was trying to build around it.  _“You’re mine, and I’m theirs.  You can’t save me.  Can’t change me.  Never could.  They want you.  They want you, and I’m going to give you to them.  I want you down on your knees.  I want you to beg to serve them.  Hail HYDRA.”_

 _What the hell is the matter with me?_ He’d had plenty of nightmares about Natasha since she’d been shot, but none like _that._   She’d never…  She wouldn’t…  _God._   Everything was so screwed up in his head, worse than it had been back in New York.  Part of it was from the trauma of what had happened to him, the torture and the damage done by Pierce’s machine.  There _was_ damage, even if he hadn’t acknowledged it before.  He was mostly healed from it, but even still, more than a month later, his mind wasn’t entirely right.  Sometimes he couldn’t remember things with his normal alacrity.  Sometimes things were jumbled, tinged with this disconcerting sense of delirium.  Sometimes he couldn’t concentrate when he’d never had trouble concentrating since the serum.  More than that, though, he’d had his fair share of bad dreams before, but not like the ones he’d been having.  He wondered if these perverted nightmares weren’t maybe the product of that procedure trying to twist his reality.  There was no way to know.  And there was no way to know if these scars would ever disappear like the ones on his body had. 

So there was that.  But there was more, too.  He was suffering with this feeling of purposeless.  Burdened and crushed by it.  He didn’t know what was right anymore.  He didn’t have his shield.  He didn’t have Natasha.  He’d lost them both, and because of that he was fundamentally lost himself.  Degraded.  Filthy.  _Used._  “I can’t be what she needs right now,” he finally said.  He wasn’t sure what he was or what he felt, but he was damn sure about that.  “I can’t keep spreading all this onto her.  She got shot because of me, Sam.”

“No, she got shot because the Winter Soldier shot her.”  Steve flashed angry, defensive eyes at his friend before he could control himself.  Sam wasn’t fazed.  He never was.  “And if that wasn’t his fault, then it sure as shit wasn’t yours.”  Steve looked away hotly.  Who the hell was Sam to try and take this from him?  It was _his_ fault.  All of it.  Bucky falling in 1945.  Bucky becoming the Winter Soldier.  Letting go of Bucky now.  Having to choose between them.  Natasha being hurt.  She’d died in his arms.  She’d barely come back.  She’d languished on the edge for days, not breathing on her own, goddamn _machines_ keeping her alive…  So white and cold and fragile.  It had only been some miracle that she’d survived.  He hadn’t protected her.  _All_ of that was his fault.

Sam sighed again, wearied himself and seeming conceding.  “Look, Steve, if you don’t want to tell me what happened, I can respect that.”

“Sam, I–”

“Listen, alright?”  Sam glanced at him, his eyes filled with only compassion and concern.  “I don’t need to know.  I’m not gonna push you.  If you want to talk, I’ll listen.  But you torturing yourself like this?  Not the answer.  It kills me to watch you do this to yourself.”

“Sam, I just–”

“Whatever she did to you, it’s not worth this.  I meant what I said before.  She’d never hurt you, not willingly.  Not on purpose.  She loves you, and you love her, and whatever happened is _not_ worth throwing that away.”  Steve felt ashamed.  Ashamed for being so childish.  Ashamed for being caught in his own lies.  “If you’re out here, trying to do this to bring your buddy home, that’s one thing.  But if you doing this to run away from her, that’s something else.  And that’s not the answer, either.”

It was silent for a bit.  Steve sank into the seat, staring out at the forest streaming by the window as they worked their way through Germany.  The leaves were turning bright with autumn colors.  Rain streaked across the glass, carrying the colors with it.  Bright orange and yellow and gold, but all he could see was red.  Red like the blood that had spilled from his chest.  _Because she shot me.  And she slept with Bucky._   He closed his eyes against the prodding of the hell inside his head.  _She slept with Bucky._   It wasn’t her fault, and he knew that.  But it hurt.  It hurt in a way he couldn’t even understand.  And it hurt so badly that he just couldn’t forgive her, no matter how much his heart screamed that he do it.  He’d failed, and not just in the obvious ways.  He’d failed _her_ because if he wasn’t capable of forgiving her, then he’d lied to her and to himself.  If he wasn’t sure about _himself_ , how the hell could he be sure about her?  He’d been the foundation of what they’d had.  He wasn’t stupid; he’d known that.  His faith in her and in himself had been the _foundation_.  His certainty that they could be together.

Well, the only thing he was certain of now was that he was angry in a way he couldn’t ever remember being before.  Never in his life had he felt so low and betrayed.  And he didn’t know how to get past it.  Maybe she wasn’t what he thought she was.  Maybe he had been blind.  Maybe…  “I just want to find him.”  Steve closed his eyes against the wet blur of the world.  “That’s all I want.”

Sam swallowed, not happy but nodding.  “I know.  We will.”

* * *

The dossier had mentioned an old HYDRA base a dozen miles north on the outskirts of Zürich.  The pages describing it were old, yellowed and covered with faded penmanship in German.  Steve had translated it.  The documents had outlined Project: Terminal Frost, the name bestowed by HYDRA upon their efforts to create an answer to Captain America.  Steve had been rather surprised to learn that this project had been nearly entirely spearheaded by Arnim Zola; Schmidt had had very little involvement with the experiments Zola had been conducting in 1943 at Azzano and other HYDRA installations across Europe.  Hundreds of American and British soldiers had died at Zola’s hands while he’d attempted to create a version of Erskine’s serum (apparently derived from a combination of what they had taken of Erskine’s original work and the Red Skull’s own blood).  Had HYDRA’s efforts to steal Erskine’s true serum in Brooklyn worked, maybe so many men wouldn’t have suffered and perished during Zola’s tests.  As it was, though, only one man had survived the initial infusions.

Bucky.

Steve didn’t know whether he should be glad Bucky hadn’t died like every other POW the Germans had tortured or grief-stricken that he hadn’t.  He was completely disgusted and horrified to learn that while the Howling Commandos had been hunting HYDRA, HYDRA had apparently been hunting them.  They’d been trying to reclaim Bucky.  It had even been documented that Bucky had been Steve’s best friend, a fortuitous and inconceivable twist of fate that would make him an even better weapon against Captain America.  The mission in the Alps in 1945 had been HYDRA’s chance to take back its wayward prisoner.  As it turned out, Steve had been lost in the ice only a few days later, and they hadn’t needed a soldier to fight Captain America anymore.  But Project: Terminal Frost had gone on, and Zola had found a new purpose for the Winter Soldier.

That was all that was in the dossier.  That and the location where they had transported Bucky after finding his body in the mountains of Switzerland.  These documents were dated 1951, and according to them, they’d kept Bucky in cryostasis until Zola had been able to slip away from SHIELD’s surveillance to come and continue his work.  The location was here, north of Zürich where Switzerland bordered with Germany.  It was fairly remote and deep in pined forests.  They reached their destination after an hour and a half more of silent driving.  The road turned from pavement to stone and from stone to mud.  Sam pulled the truck up as far as he could to a rusted, dilapidated gate.  The forest encroached upon the road, and the trees, shrubs, and vines had grown over the metal barricade in front of them.  There were old, rotted road blocks shoved to the side.  It was still raining and had been for most of the last few days, the cold, autumn drizzle dripping like tears from a gun metal gray sky, and the canopies of the trees were thick with water.  Beyond the gate there was more of the road, but there was so much underbrush around it that it was impossible to see further.  “I guess this is it.”

Steve glanced over the scene, taking in the thick weeds and bushes and the crumbling brick wall that made the perimeter.  “I’ll check it out.  See if I can push that gate open.”

Sam nodded, and Steve got out of the car.  His boots sunk into the mud a little, old and new leaves a mush beneath his feet.  He shrugged deeper into his leather jacket and pulled up the hood of his sweatshirt.  His breath was a jet of vapor in front of his mouth as he reached the gate and shook it experimentally.  It rattled, the hinges nearly eaten through by time.  It took nothing at all for him to bust the old lock and push one side wide open.  He shoved the other, and it gave a miserable whine as it moved.  Satisfied he went back to the car, knocked the mud from his boots, and climbed back in.  “Onward?” he said.

Sam looked a little dubious.  “Onward.”  He shifted the truck back into drive, and they were through the gate and into whatever lay beyond.  The road continued for some way, barely a road at all there was so much grass and brush over it.  They drove again in silence, this one mostly tense from anticipation rather than unresolved worries and fears.  The truck bumped over the ruts in the road, the rain splattering softly against the windshield before the wipers swished it away.  Finally, just when they were both about to call this whole thing a lie, a gray building appeared in the woods.

Sam drove closer before parking far enough away as to not be clearly visible from the complex.  Both he and Steve got out.  They stood in silence, listening, trying to gauge the situation.  Aside from the constant, soft patter of rain, the forest was quiet.  Eerily so.  They seemed to be alone.  Maybe it was only Steve’s imagination and his already rattled nerves, but a shudder was trying to work its way up his spine.  The building looked like a marriage between a research lab and a prison.  It wasn’t terribly big, only one level and perhaps a couple thousand feet in area.  Perhaps it had been built after the war (and it must have been, because he’d been in this area before with the Howling Commandos and this installation most definitely had not been here), but it had obviously been expanded.  Some of the building’s design looked more modern.  However, even that was weathered and aged, gray cement and blackened wood stained by the passage of years.  There was an aura to it, though, something vile and sinister that clung like the chilly rain to his skin.  _Evil._

This was most definitely the place.

Sam sighed slowly.  “We doing this?”

Steve nodded with as much confidence as he could muster.  The two of them went to the back of the truck.  They’d placed their things there, duffels full of clothes, a hospital grade medical kit, survival gear, and numerous cases full of guns.  Slipping the weapons from country to country hadn’t been easy, but with Hill’s connections they’d managed it.  Even though it seemed like they were completely alone, like this building had been abandoned and left to rot decades ago, there was no sense in being careless, particularly given the caliber of killer they were trying to find.  Steve grabbed a Glock and loaded it before strapping its holster to his right thigh and sliding the gun into it.  Sam took another handgun and gave one of the shotguns to Steve.  He loaded that too, procured some more ammunition, and slung the shotgun over his shoulder.  He grabbed another Glock and slid it into the waistband of his jeans beneath his belt at his back.  “Ready?” he asked Sam when they were done.

Sam was palming his own shotgun.  “I feel like we need some action music, you know, for our montage of getting ready to kick ass.  Like _Bad Boys_ or something.”  He shot Steve a weak smile and handed him a flashlight.  “I get to be Will Smith.  You can be Martin Lawrence.”

“Who?”

Sam grinned more, like a blast of warmth in this cold, miserable rain.  “Never mind.  Let’s go.”

They left the car and headed up the remains of a path toward the building.  The hint of levity disappeared as they moved, instinct and training guiding the two soldiers to be fleet and ready for attack.  Nothing happened, even as they reached the door.  They stood under the awning, listening and waiting, guns held at the ready.  Eventually Steve gestured to Sam, and Sam nodded.  Steve grabbed the handgun from his holster and flipped the safety off with his thumb.  He took a deep breath, taking his flashlight and switching that on as well, before turning and pushing the door open.

Surprisingly it wasn’t locked.  Once it was wide enough for him to look through, he slid along it, shoving his gun inside with the flashlight parallel to the barrel.  The beam of light shot through the pitch blackness.  Steve narrowed his eyes and took a quick look.  There was nothing there aside from an abandoned security station and two hallways on either side of a lobby.  Steve shared a glance with Sam, and Sam nodded again.  Together they pushed open the doors the rest of the way.

Everything inside was covered in dust and mold, a thick blanket that looked grimy and damp but unbothered.  It coated the desk and chairs, the tile floors, and the walls.  Flecks floated in the shafts of illumination from their flashlights, drifting aimlessly and haphazardly.  The walls were covered on faded, peeling paint.  Other than the security checkpoint, there was no furniture.  No decoration.  Sam and Steve made their way inside on cautious feet, guns clenched and ready.  Their ears were strained, but there was nothing to hear, nothing other than their own shallow heartbeats and soft breaths.  They were alone.

Eventually Sam relaxed a little.  “Nobody’s been here in ages.”

Steve had to agree.  He hadn’t known how likely it might be for Bucky to return to any of these places, but even if he’d been programmed to do it, this wasn’t the one.  Still, he wasn’t ready to give up.  “Let’s keep looking.”

They walked down the hallway to the left, flashlights cutting through the thick shadows.  Windows lined the corridor, letting in the dull light of day.  A few were smashed, and puddles of water glistened on the filthy floor tiles.  They passed offices.  All of them were empty aside from lonely chairs and desks.  They gave them cursory glances, but there was nothing to be had.  Obviously HYDRA had pulled out of here ages ago.  “Think we’re wasting our time,” Sam remarked after sweeping another abandoned room.  He looked back where Steve was guarding the door and shook his head.  “There’s nothing here.”

Steve gritted his teeth.  He wasn’t willing to let it go, not with the pit of unease twisting in his stomach.  He couldn’t explain it because it was completely irrational, but he just _knew_ there was something here.  He left Sam and continued down this hallway.  This place was a little like a maze, and they were in its interior now so it was very dark.  In most of the rooms, the lights didn’t work, but there was still some electricity to the complex (which seemed unusual and suspicious – why would there be power here after all these years?).  Sam followed, his boots crunching over some broken glass.  At the end of the hallway, there were double doors.  Steve tightened his grip on his gun, waiting for Sam to reach his side, before pushing them open.  The room was completely black inside, their flashlights only revealing hints of tables and chairs and equipment.  Steve felt along the wall before finding the switch for the lights.  He flipped it.

“Ah, shit,” Sam breathed.

This was where they had kept Bucky.  There was no doubt about it.  The pale, flickering illumination burst through the room, shoving back the darkness and revealing a metallic table flanked by carts of old, rusted tools.  The table had restraints, and when Steve saw that, his vision went red with rage for a second and taking a short breath was all he could do to keep himself calm.  He stepped inside toward that table, swallowing thickly.  He couldn’t think.  He could barely force his lungs to keep breathing.  Shards of nightmares cut into his head.  Bucky, screaming and struggling as they dragged him to that table.  Bucky, crying for his ma, crying for _him_.  Cruel, uncaring hands.  Zola, that goddamn bastard, overseeing the work with beady eyes and a satisfied smile.  He couldn’t stand to think about it, blinking in front of that table, _looking_ but not _seeing_.  Not seeing the rust (blood?) on it.  Not seeing those straps and cuffs.  His short, ragged breaths were thunderous in the silence.

He heard rustling.  Sam was next to a file cabinet beside a lab bench.  He’d pulled open one of the drawers, and he had a folder in his hands.  When he realized Steve was watching him, his eyes filled with worry and sadness and he closed the folder.  He shook his head.  “Steve, don’t.  You shouldn’t–”

Steve was in front of him with a few huge steps, holstering his gun, undaunted and not listening.  Sam tightened his jaw in anger and displeasure that he was being ignored.  He was reluctant to give him the folder a second, but he did.  Steve opened it.

It was gruesome.  Pictures upon pictures, each outlined with notes in German.  Photos of Bucky’s body after they’d pulled it from the Alps.  His left arm was just _gone_.  His chest had been painted in huge bruises and gashes.  Shattered bones and massive internal damage.  He’d barely been alive when they’d flooded him with more of their make-shift version of the serum in the hopes it would help him survive.  More pictures, dated almost a decade later.  Pages detailing the test subject’s vitals.  Photographs of Bucky post the wintry sleep, his wounds mostly healed over time.  Remarks about the efficacy of their serum.  Diagrams of the bionic arm.  God, there was technology in it that had been pilfered from SHIELD, from Stark Industries.  Horrific images of the team of doctors and scientists, garbed in surgical gear and _wiring_ the arm into Bucky’s shoulder.  He couldn’t make himself look anymore, closing the folder shut and tossing it onto the bench.

Sam’s comforting voice slipped through the haze of pain and anger.  His gentle hand curled over Steve’s shoulder.  “Steve, come on.  Don’t.  There’s nothing for us here,” he said softly.  “We should go.”

Steve couldn’t accept that.  He gathered himself, blinking back the sting of tears, and grabbed another folder.  More pages of notes and descriptions of procedures.  He threw that one as well before reaching for another.  And another.  There had to be _something_ , some hint of where Bucky might have gone or how to help him.  There had to be!

A smaller composition book slid out of the last folder he opened and fluttered down to his feet.  Steve knelt and grabbed it.  More writing, dated November 1971.  He was starting to recognize Zola’s sloppy scrawl.  “The subject is resisting all traditional forms of persuasion.  His loyalty to his previous life is remarkable.  Psychotropic drugs have produced some effect but not enough to sustain our control over his mind for any appreciable amount of time.  In addition, they create too much emotional instability.  I am informed by a man named Colonel Lukin of the Soviet Union that his projects have produced some interesting methods of brainwashing.  I intend to travel to Moscow to investigate what he has to offer, if my health agrees with the trip.”

“I guess that explains how he ended up in the hands of the Russians,” Sam surmised.

“He must mean the machine that…”  He couldn’t finish.  The memories were harsh and driving, that horrific chair in the bottom of the Triskelion where they’d ripped Bucky’s memories right out of his head with shocks and torture.  Where they’d done the same to him.

Steve shook that away and focused.  He flipped to the back of book, past notes and drawings, and read the end of the diary.  _“Perhaps I can offer them something in return.  The Russians are dangerous, but the war taught me not to dismiss opportunities on the grounds of my personal dislike of who’s offering them.  The future cannot be secured by Aryan might alone.”_ Revolted, Steve shut the book with a spray of dust and tossed it to the bench as well.  _Bastards._

“Hey, Steve, look at this.”  Sam’s call drew his attention, and he made his way to the shadowy rear of the room where his friend was standing.  “That looks… surprisingly modern.”  Sam was pointed to an electronic keypad securing a steel door.  The interface included a touch screen.

Steve appraised it worriedly.  Then he drew his gun again.  This explained why there was still power.  Obviously this place wasn’t as abandoned as they’d thought.  Sam followed suit, pressing his back against the wall.  They waited a moment, listening again, before Steve signaled he was going to break down the door.  Sam covered him as he stood back a little and landed a kick with all of his considerable strength behind it.  The first strike wasn’t enough, even though his foot dented the thick steel inward by a good six inches.  The next knocked it clear off its hinges.

Sam charged through with his gun at the ready.  Steve followed.  But there was nothing beyond save a short dark corridor.  This was definitely newly constructed, built of sleek metal and unblemished tile.  “What the hell is this?” Sam asked.

Steve didn’t have an answer, his heart pumping in anxiety and apprehension.  At the end of the hall there was an elevator.  “Déjà vu?” he muttered as they walked down the corridor.

“You too, huh?” Sam answered softly.  “What fun, hidden hell did you find?”

There was a simple down button beside the elevator.  Steve pressed it.  “Right before we took down SHIELD, Fury sent Nat and me to Yalta to investigate the possibility of a Russian super soldier program.  There was a lab under a hospital there where they’d obviously been testing out their serums.  That was…”

“The mission where she shot you.  I know,” Sam said softly, worriedly.  Steve shot him a questioning glance because he’d never told Sam about what had happened.  “Read the reports.”  The elevator dinged.  Sam looked over his shoulder before following Steve inside.  “These fuckers really seem to get off on forcing us to hurt each other.”  He shook his head as the doors slid closed again and the elevator began to descend.  Steve saw sweat beading on his brow.  “War is hell, but at least you didn’t have to worry about shit like that.”

Steve drew a deep breath to center himself.  The elevator chirped softly, depositing them at wherever they were now.  He pressed himself to the side of the small car, gun ready.  Sam did the same.  The doors opened, revealing another dimly lit corridor.  They shared another questioning glance.  Keeping their guns up, they slowly stepped off the elevator and headed out into the shadows.  The doors slid shut behind them.  There didn’t seem to be much down here.  Again, a few offices.  These were more recently abandoned.  Computers sat on desks, all dark and idle.  Sam tried to turn one on to no avail.  They went onward, going deeper into this quiet place.  At the end of this hall, there was another set of double doors.  They stood before them, wondering and fearing what they might find on the other side.  _Can’t possibly be worse than what you just saw._   Feeling unreasonably comforted by that, Steve pushed open the doors.

It was another lab.  Whereas the first had been rust and darkness and rot, this one was pristine.  State of the art.  Filled with sleek and expensive-looking equipment.  But this place, too, was completely vacant.  “What the hell?” Sam whispered in awe and shock.  “Is this some super-secret HYDRA lair?”

“Worse,” Steve said.  He picked up a binder from one of the lab benches, and on its front was the distinctive logo of SHIELD.  Sam looked utterly disgusted.  Steve opened the binder, but it was only a set of lab protocols printed on SHIELD letterhead.  Every bit as angry as Sam, he set it back on the bench.

They roamed deeper inside.  There were rows and rows of clean test tubes, of vials, of pipettes…  Everything was neat and tidy.  “What were they working on?” Steve asked, brow furrowed in confusion as he looked around.

“No idea,” Sam answered.  “Nothing good.”

There was a refrigerator at the other end of the room.  When they went to it, they saw it was secured with a fingerprint scanner and a numeric lock, the sort that had been all over the Triskelion.  Inside there were vials and vials of dark red liquid.  Each was labeled “Alpha” with a serial number and a date.  They went back nearly three years, but the most recent were near the front.  And there was one from only a month ago.  Dumbfounded, Steve shook his head.  “What is all of this?”

“Looks like blood,” Sam said warily.  “Loads of it.”  He pulled another folder from the desk beside the fridge and started looking through it.

“Yeah, but whose?”

“Uh…  You’re not going to want to hear this.”  Sam’s eyes were wide with alarm.  He turned the folder so Steve could see it.  “It’s yours.”

For a seeming eternity, Steve didn’t make sense of that.  Then he shifted his gaze from Sam’s worried expression to the papers before him.  It was an intake log.  Each entry was for the “Alpha serum”, and next to it was a serial number and the name of the person who’d delivered it.  Those he didn’t recognize.  But the name next to the “SUBJECT” line was _his_.  “This…  This is impossible.  I never…  I never agreed to _anything_ like this!”

“Steve,” Sam said calmly, “you didn’t need to agree.”

It took a moment for that to sink in.  It was true.  SHIELD had found him in the ice.  Taken care of him as he’d recovered.  Tended his wounds after the Chitauri invasion.  He’d _worked_ for SHIELD.  All of his routine physicals had been conducted by SHIELD physicians and SHIELD laboratory technicians.  Every injury he’d received in the field had been treated by SHIELD doctors.  They hadn’t needed his permission.  Every time he’d just cooperated, not realizing with whom he was cooperating, and they’d shipped his blood straight to HYDRA.  He looked down at that log, scanning it with furious eyes.  After a glut in 2012 when he’d been found, it was a sporadic flow, but during April of this year the daily intake of blood and tissue samples had skyrocketed.  He realized why.  That was after Natasha had shot him.  When he’d been in a goddamn _coma_ and recovering in the medical ward, drifting in and out of consciousness and from surgery to surgery as they’d repaired his broken back and leg.  They’d practically drained him dry, if the sheer number of samples logged was any indication, and he’d never even _known_.  Was that one of the reasons he’d been so weak, so sick?  They’d done this to him without his consent, without even his knowledge.  Samples had apparently come in as late as the end of July.  That was _after_ SHIELD had fallen!  The last person who’d delivered those samples was someone named Yelena Belova.  Who the hell was that?

His sense of violation was second only to his anger.  This entire lab.  The work that had gone on here for _years._   It had all been for one purpose.  “They were trying to recreate the serum,” he seethed lowly.

“Is that possible?”

According to everything he knew about it, about the failed attempts including those that had produced the Hulk and the Red Guardian, the answer was no.  But he was willing to concede that he wasn’t sure about anything anymore.  “I don’t know.”

The two of them stood still for what felt to be an eternity, struggling in the silence to come to terms with that they’d found.  They’d gone searching for clues about the evil of the past only to find a wealth of horror in the present.  More horror, like what they’d just experienced in DC hadn’t been bad enough.  Steve could hardly contain his rage.  What HYDRA had done to Bucky.  What SHIELD had done to him.  Pierce and the STRIKE Team…  How many more?  He felt so low, so _used._   Again.  Like he was nothing more than a tool, a source of blood and brawn, an _asset_.  “Light the place up,” he growled.  The viciousness of his own voice bothered him, but not enough to douse or even cool the fires of his anger.

Sam looked aghast for a moment.  “You sure?  We might be able to figure out what they were up to.  Call Fury.  He was hunting these bastards down.  Shouldn’t we hand this over to him?  Steve, what if they managed to–”

Steve answered by ramming his fist into the refrigerator.  The glass shattered, and an alarm went off.  But that didn’t stop him.  He pulled the trays of blood samples out, uncaring about the fresh red from his slashed knuckles, and dumped them unceremoniously in a nearby sink.  The vials broke, spilling thick, viscous crimson down into the drain.  He watched that but only saw the blood pouring from his chest again, pouring and _pouring_.  Spilling down Natasha’s body into his shaking hands.  “Doesn’t matter.  If they did, they did.”  He curled his fingers into fists to stop their shaking.  “Burn the goddamn place to the ground.  All of it goes.”

“Steve–”

“Sam!”

Sam stared at him like he didn’t recognize him.  Truth be told, Steve wasn’t sure he recognized himself.  But Sam sighed.  “Right.”

They moved fast.  There was a cabinet against the far wall that had tanks, large ones that had gas inside them.  Sam broke the lock.  Steve pulled them out one handed.  He lifted them one at a time clear over his head and carried them to around the room, spreading them out.  Then the two of them stood at the door.  “Ready?” Sam asked.

“Hold on,” Steve said.  He ripped the steel lab door right off the wall.  He turned it perpendicular to the doorway and held it across there and flush to the floor, shoving his back up against it.  Sam got down beside him.  “Go.”

Sam took out his handgun and pointed it over their makeshift barricade.  He aimed and pulled the trigger.  Once.  And then again and again.  The explosion was deafening.  The force blasted them, but Steve gritted his teeth and dug his boots into the tiled floor and shoved back.  Fire shot around them, hot and horrible, and Steve clenched his eyes shut and pulled Sam closer to him.  It seemed to go on forever.  But it didn’t, and when it was over, there was the crackling of fire and the wailing of alarms and the thundering of their hearts.

Sam crawled away and got back to his feet.  Smoke was pouring out of the lab.  It was fully engulfed, the room a swirl of raging flames.  Something else exploded inside, knocking Sam off his feet.  But Steve was there, helping his friend upright.  “Come on,” he ordered.

They ran back down the corridor, the corridor that was starting to shake and vibrate as the fires spread.  Sam swore, looking back at the flaming hell pursuing them.  “Shit!” he cried, and Steve grabbed him and pulled him onward.  The power winked out, the heat from the inferno behind them reaching long fingers to snatch them.  They were faster.  The elevator was there, waiting.  Sam pressed the up button a few times, but without power, nothing happened.  The doors didn’t open.  “Shit,” he whispered.

“Back up!” Steve ordered.  One massive kick dented the doors enough that he could get his fingers between them.  His muscles bulged with the effort as he pulled them apart.  “Come on!”  He pushed Sam inside.

“Now what?”  It was almost impossible to hear Sam over the cacophony of things burning and exploding.

“I think that next time I suggest something like this you smack some damn sense into me,” Steve replied breathlessly.  Up was the only way.  He crouched and cupped his hands.

“Where’s the fun in that?” Sam asked, just as winded.  He planted his sneaker in Steve’s hands, and Steve easily lifted him to the top of the elevator.  He banged his forearm into the ceiling where an access hatch was.  It took a couple of hits to knock it loose.

Steve grunted, more in response than in effort, and propelled Sam up.  “Let me know when any of this starts being fun.”

“But blowing shit up feels good at least.”  Sam scrambled up and reached a hand back down, but Steve was already jumping straight through the hole and onto the top of the elevator car.

They looked up.  It was pitch black above them.  Steve pulled his flashlight free and shined it upward.  It was nearly fifty feet to the floor above.  “How fast can you climb?” he asked.

“Fast,” Sam replied.  He got his hand around the cables and hauled himself up.  Steve followed, sliding the flashlight between his teeth.  The two of them worked quickly, cutting their palms and pinching their fingers on the metal cables.  The shaft shook wildly, vibrating like it was in the midst of an earthquake.  Below them the heat was rising, fire and smoke climbing nearly as fast as they were.  They reached the next floor after a few terrible seconds of struggling.  Sam was above him, shining his flashlight at the exit.  The damn doors were shut.  “Steve!”

Heat was wafting upward, heat that was nearly intolerable.  Something rumbled again, harshly enough that Steve nearly lost his grip.  Sam’s foot flailed down and hit Steve right in the face.  “Sorry!”  It didn’t hurt much, but it did make his flashlight tumble from his mouth.  _Damn it.  Damn it!_ Steve fished in his sweatshirt for his phone so he could see something.  He thumbed it on and pointed up.  The doors to the floor above were right there, nearly half a dozen feet across the shaft.  If they opened them, the pressure differential could suck the fire right up to them. 

Still, staying put wasn’t much of an option.  “Hold on!”  He angled himself around the cables and jumped.  He hit the doors hard, but his fingers latched onto the narrow ledge beneath them as he started to fall, his phone between his teeth.  He pulled himself up and then slammed his shoulder into the doors.  The minute he broke the seal, the heat rushed by him into the corridor beyond.  “God,” he whispered, shining the light back toward the cables.  “Sam!”

Thank heavens Sam had been a paratrooper, so leaping over a pit of fire didn’t really faze him.  Steve caught him by the shoulder, fisting his shirt until it nearly ripped and hauling him against the doors.  “Ready?”

It didn’t matter.  Something below them detonated with a bang that vibrated their bones.  Sam yelped, scrambling for a hold against the force pummeling them.  Steve put his fist through the doors, widening the hole.  He fought to get his phone back in his pocket before grabbing the ragged edges and pulling them apart.  As the left side slid into the wall, it snagged the sleeve of his sweatshirt.  The sharp edge gouged his forearm, ripping skin and cloth.  Sam slipped beside him, and Steve sacrificed his right hand’s grip to snatch Sam as he pinwheeled.  His cry was one of effort and strain as he lifted his friend back up to safety.  Sam got his hands in the gap between the doors and pulled as Steve pushed.  A moment later, they were parted wide enough for Sam to get through them.

Steve tried to wrench his hand loose, but his sleeve was snagged good and tight.  He pulled harder and harder.  With one last frustrated yank, he was free.

His phone must not have been very deeply in his pocket.  All the motion jostled it loose.  It went flying down the shaft.

“Damn it!”  He stared after it with wide, incredulous eyes until he couldn’t see it anymore.  He didn’t hear it hit, not with the fire raging and the building rattling and his own heart booming, but he imagined it smashing against the top of the elevator and burning.  There was nothing he could do.  Numb and a little surprised, he went after Sam through the doors onto the safety of the floor beyond.

The two of them stood, breathing heavily, listening as the lab below them continue to explode.  Great billows of smoke wafted up, filtering into the hallway.  They shared a shaken look.  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” Sam gasped.

Steve stared into the shadows of the elevator, yellow and orange flickering, red shining.  The fire would find its way up in all likelihood.  A gas line.  Power conduits.  The place would burn.  This hell and everything it symbolized would _burn_ , just like he wanted.

Still, as they walked out, he couldn’t ignore the sinking feeling in his stomach that he’d lost something important.


	3. Chapter 3

Considering the size of the fire raging in the woods outside Zürich, Sam and Steve were lucky they were able to get back to the main road before emergency vehicles came blaring toward them.  Literally they were just in time, barely free of the dirt path in the woods and onto the pavement when the blur of flashing lights raced by them.  Police and fire and rescue.  It seemed odd that so many had come so quickly; the fire was huge, but the location was pretty remote.  Sam irrationally tried to shrink down in the driver’s seat, clenching the wheel tightly and repeatedly glancing in the rearview mirror to make sure the vehicles kept going away after they’d passed them.  He was oddly reminded of a game he used to play with his elderly grandma in which she’d told him to “duck down” in the back seat whenever they’d heard a siren on the road.  _“Duck down so they don’t see ya, Sammy,”_ she’d said, laughing as Sam curled into the smallest position possible between the back seat and the driver’s seat on the floor in his father’s car.  _“Duck down!”_

What was it that Hill had said?  When she’d handed them the dossier right before they’d left the States.  _“Be careful, Steve.  You might not want to pull on that thread.”_

“Jesus Christ,” he whispered, checking again and again to make sure they hadn’t been noticed.  HYDRA or not, abandoned or not, what they’d just done was arson.  Not to mention the fact they’d been roaming around Europe for a couple of weeks not entirely legally, particularly with the load of weapons they were carrying.  It was a minor miracle and no small cause for relief that they’d escaped suspicion thus far.  Sam couldn’t stop his heart from pounding, cold, uncomfortable sweat breaking out all over his face and beneath the wet jacket and shirt plastered to his skin.  He was almost shaking.  “Jesus H. Fucking Christ…”

Steve _was_ shaking.  Shaking hard.  His hair was soaked with rain.  He was pale underneath streaks of soot.  His eyes were… glazed.  Like he wasn’t all there.  Admittedly, Sam had only known Steve for a few months now, but they’d gone through enough together that Sam felt qualified (probably overly qualified) to differentiate Steve’s moods.  But damn if he could read moments like this beyond knowing whole-heartedly that something was very wrong.  Steve wouldn’t talk, not about what he was thinking or feeling or fearing.  He was hypervigilant and anxious.  Barely sleeping.  Irritable.  Avoiding talking about Barnes or Natasha.  Classic signs of PTSD (severe PTSD, which scared Sam a great deal).  Sam knew Captain America could take the hits like no one else, recover and heal faster, function with less sleep and with injuries that would kill a normal man.  Stand tall when everything else and everyone else faltered and fell.  This guy next to him, though, seemed so far from the image of Captain America with which he’d grown up that it was unimaginable.  He’d have to be blind to not see it.  That poise Steve had had when they’d met, that quiet seriousness, that genuine sincerity and friendliness and easy smile…  It was all gone.  Burned away, it seemed.  Bled from him.  This whole nightmare…  These last few weeks…  It was like watching a man unravel, one thread at a time at first and then faster and faster as things snagged and pulled and ripped.  “Steve?  You okay?”

Steve didn’t answer.  He didn’t seem to even hear the question.  He looked like he was trying to shake himself free of something.  His hands were tight in his jeans, the left one bloodied by the gouge on his arm, his right one slashed from punching the refrigerator down in the lab.  He was exhausted, with hollowed out eyes that seemed unnaturally bright and blue against the pallor of his skin.  Shaken and unkempt.  Suffering.  God, Sam didn’t know how to help him.  For all of his touting about knowing the right answer before, something told him blowing up labs (fucking evil labs filled with demons old and new, but still) wasn’t it.  Captain America was falling apart on his watch, and he didn’t know what to do.  “Steve.  Come on.  I need to know if you’re okay.”

“Yeah.  Yeah, I’m fine,” Steve returned, gathering himself enough to look over his shoulder.  He seemed to suddenly realize how close they’d potentially come to being discovered, arrested, or worse.  “I’m okay.”

Sam glanced over at him again and again, resisting the urge drive faster.  “We should pull over.  That’s bleeding pretty bad.”

Steve turned back.  Everything with him seemed just a bit sluggish, like he was having a hard time parsing his thoughts and paying attention.  That was another thing Sam had been noticing more and more the last few days.  Maybe for a normal man it was nothing, but for Steve, Sam knew it was significant.  “It’s fine,” Steve said, glancing at the red staining his sleeve and pants.

“Steve–”

“I said it’s fine!” Steve snapped.  His eyes were wild, unrestrained.  Sam glared back at him, equal parts angry and afraid and sick of this shit.  The tense second felt like an eternity.  Then Steve came back to himself.  He always did.  This was how things had become since Steve’s moods had started to fluctuate and then deteriorate.  Steve would be volatile, easily riled and easily upset.  Or he would be distant, like he was a million miles away.  Sam would get worried, question him, of course, because this was pretty damn upsetting.  Steve would push Sam away, get angrier still over his concern.  And then…  “Sam, I – I’m sorry.  I, uh…  I just…  I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it.”  _Like a script._   It was, in some sense.  The same scene playing out over and over again.  Sam was getting nowhere fast, increasingly certain that they weren’t just going to find Barnes out here.  He was also increasingly certain that searching for him like this, let alone finding him, was probably not a good thing for Steve.  Steve was like a man obsessed, haunted and driven.  Sam could certainly sympathize with that; Riley had been like a brother to him, the best friend he’d ever had, and after he’d died, Sam had walked this same thin line between barely scraping it together and completely falling apart.  He and Riley had met in high school, joined the Air Force together, trained and served and fought a war at each other’s sides.  Losing him had been one of the most painful moments of his life.  That sense of helplessness.  Of despair.  Of _anger_.  He’d gone over the moment where Riley had been shot down in his head in the years since, playing it out repeatedly like some sort of ritualistic penance, searching for the mistake he’d made that had led to Riley’s death.  It had taken him some time to realize there wasn’t one, wasn’t anything he could have done.  He didn’t think Steve had ever come to the same understanding.

Of course, Riley hadn’t been captured by the enemy and brainwashed and turned into the world’s deadliest assassin.  Riley hadn’t been stripped of his memories, of his identity.  Riley hadn’t _tortured_ him.  Steve’s situation was unfathomable.  Experiencing the trauma he’d experienced was bound to cause damage.  Steve was lucky his body could heal the physical injuries like they were nothing because the emotional ones were obviously festering in a major way.  Sam didn’t feel adequately equipped to contend with this.  Steve didn’t have many friends, what with the way he’d been forced into the future, and given all of the betrayal he’d faced at the hands of SHIELD, Sam knew he was likely one of Steve’s only sources of comfort, familiarity, and support right now.  That had been the main reason he’d agreed to help Steve on this crazy quest to find the Winter Soldier and bring him back, despite what that monster had done to all of them.  He wanted to be there for Steve, to do whatever Steve needed to help him heal.  Had he known Steve would slip like he was slipping, he would never have gone along with this.  He would have kept Steve from going somehow, gotten Stark to stop him, gotten Natasha to talk some sense into him.  But it was too late for that.  He didn’t know how to fix this.  He was a VA counselor, not a psychiatrist.  Steve needed a therapist, someone trained to deal with his situation.  And, as certain as he was that this crusade was doing Steve further harm, he was absolutely positive Steve _needed_ Natasha.

Sadly, that seemed out of the question.  No matter how Steve’s subconscious was bleeding out the painful desperation he was feeling for Natasha, the captain was ridiculously stubborn and doing his damnedest to lie to himself.  This was a proverbial train wreck, and Sam was stuck watching and hating it.

“Can I have your phone?”

His heart leapt.  Maybe not.  Steve mistook his surprise and relief for concern.  He actually _smiled_.  A fake, placating smile, but a smile nonetheless.  “It’s fine, Sam.  Really.  Look.  Not even bleeding anymore.”  Sure enough, the cuts on Steve’s knuckles looked hours old already, and the nasty gash on his forearm had stopped gushing.  He held out his hand.  “Please.  I need to call Tony.”

“Tony?”  Part of Sam’s hopes plummeted.  The two of them had been out on their own for what felt like an eternity with very little contact with the Avengers.  Aside from Hill and Stark, they’d spoken with no one.  Sam kept hoping Natasha would call Steve; he had a feeling if she did, Steve would come to his senses.  But she seemed to be as stubborn and traumatized as he was.

Still, calling _somebody_ was an improvement.  Sam fished in the pocket of his jeans for his StarkPhone and handed it to Steve.  Steve was wiping his hands on a rag from their bag in the back.  He took the phone and dialed Tony quickly.  Sam concentrated on the road.  Another slew of emergency vehicles zoomed past, sirens shrieking and lights blinding, but aside from jacking his heart rate back up, they didn’t do anything to them.  A few seconds later, Steve was talking.  “Tony?  Hi.  It’s Rogers.”  Steve grimaced, glancing at Sam like he was trying to muster up a lie.  “Yeah, we’re fine.”  A pause.  “No.  I’m not – come on.”  Another pause.  “Listen, Tony.  Tony!  Just listen, alright?  I need your help.  I need some information.”  And then it made sense, why Steve was calling.  “Whatever you can find on someone named Belova.  Yelena Belova.  She, uh…  No.  We think she’s HYDRA, or at least involved with them.”  Yet another pause, this one longer still.  Sam could hear hints of Tony’s voice on the other end of the line.  He could imagine Stark sitting at one of his many holographic computer terminals, having that AI of his running through data, searching the internet at mind-boggling speeds.  “I don’t know if she has anything to do with the Winter Soldier.”  Steve’s eyes darkened.  “Tony, I don’t – no.  Can you just look her up?  Please?”  Stark’s “why” was sharp, demanding, and loud enough for even Sam to hear it.  Sam didn’t know Tony that well, but it was pretty obvious the billionaire did not like to be cut out of the loop.  “I…  I can’t tell you right now.  Not over the phone.  Just trust me.  This is serious.”

Hearing that hurt.  He could practically feel the betrayal Steve was feeling.  And he wished Steve would just put the phone on speaker already.  Hearing one half of a conversation was frustrating to say the least.  “I know.  I don’t have any answers.  Not enough to be sure.  That’s why I’m asking you to do this.  I need information on this woman.  Last known location, but whatever you’ve got.  We gotta track her down.”  Steve sighed and tipped the phone away from his mouth, exasperated.  He glanced over at Sam.  “He’s looking.”

“Something’s not right about this,” Sam muttered.  As they neared civilization, the forest thinned, houses and buildings appearing in the trees.  It started raining harder, fat drops splattering against the windshield.  The clouds were bloated, hanging low.  “God, does the sun ever come out here?”

“Tony, wait.  Wait.  Slow down.  What’re you…”  Sam looked over just in time to see Steve’s face go abruptly lax with alarm.  The color drained from his cheeks and his eyes widened.  “That’s not…  That’s impossible.  Are you sure?”  Sam’s heart started thrumming in his chest again.  Cold sweat broke out on his back anew, and his hands turned clammy where he worked them nervously over the wheel.  Anxiety churned in his stomach.  “Well, is she there?  Because if she’s there, she can’t–”  Sam could hear Tony’s voice.  It was tense, worried, and his words were coming fast.  _What the hell?_   “No.  No.  Yeah, uh, alright.  Call me as soon as you can.”

Steve dropped the phone from his ear.  For an endless moment, he was still.  Shocked into some kind of stupor.  He was just staring ahead, staring at the clouds and the rain pouring down on them.  Sam couldn’t keep his irritation and worry contained anymore.  “What?” he asked sharply.  “Steve, _what?”_

That seemed to knock Steve loose.  He sniffed and looked down at his bloodied jeans, his hands, his fingers still clasped around the phone.  “Yelena Belova is an alias,” he explained quietly.  “An alias used by Black Widow.”

* * *

Stark did call back, about an hour later after they had checked into a hotel in Zürich.  Steve was in the shower when Sam’s phone rang, so Sam answered it.  The temptation to tell Tony about everything, about what they’d found and what they’d done, about Steve’s deterioration, was pretty damn strong.  However, he didn’t.  He didn’t know why, exactly.  Part of it was definitely that he didn’t know who to trust at this point.  Those simple words ( _an alias used by Black_ Widow) had turned _everything_ on its head again.  Stark had been nothing but loyal thus far, but he was working with Hill, and Hill had been part of SHIELD.  Obviously they hadn’t ferreted out of all HYDRA’s influence, not if this secret lab in the middle of nowhere had gotten a hold of samples of Steve’s blood _after_ SHIELD had fallen.  There was no explanation for that, at least nothing good.  Still, it wasn’t just the fear they were somehow being played.  Telling Tony about Steve’s nightmares seemed like another betrayal of some sort.  He couldn’t do it.

Stark was itching to help, but Sam told him to stay put.  They didn’t know anything at this point.  Apparently Stark was in Malibu on Stark Industries’ business, so he didn’t know where Natasha was or what she was doing.  He mentioned something about Natasha being summoned to testify before Congress, but that had had been days ago.  At one point she and Barton been back to Stark Tower, but according to JARVIS, they weren’t there presently.  Contacting her was out of the question.  It hurt to even think she could be involved in HYDRA’s work, but if she was, they couldn’t tip their hand.  Sam ordered Tony to keep everything secret until he and Steve could find some answers.  The inventor begrudgingly agreed and sent all the data on Belova he’d managed to locate to their phone.  He ended the call by telling Sam he’d keep working on trying to figure this out and by forcing Sam to promise that they’d be careful.  That they’d stay low and call for help if they needed it.  That they wouldn’t do anything stupid.

The minute he saw there was indeed a last known location for Belova in the information Stark had sent, he knew the chances of them lying low had gone from small to infinitesimally small.  And the minute he saw the set of Steve’s jaw and the determined look in his eyes, he knew they were well and truly screwed.

Now they were driving again, back through Germany toward the Czech Republic.  That was the supposed location, a skyscraper in Prague.  According to SHIELD intel (SHIELD intel – could that even be trusted?), Belova had had dealings there with a man named Albert Malik earlier that spring.  Tony didn’t have much on this guy.  He was Russian, born in 1965.  He owned a company called Vitalacorp, which dealt in biotechnology, specifically designing, developing, and manufacturing types of plastics, rubbers, and metals for implants and prosthetics.  It was a small company, and its share of the market in medical research was paltry.  Malik himself seemed to be a nobody.  No criminal record.  No political record.  No record of anything out of the ordinary at all.  What did any of that have to do with HYDRA and what they’d found in Zürich?

As for Belova herself, there was a wealth of useless information.  Again, this was all coming from SHIELD (or from the CIA and MI6 but filtered by SHIELD, which was just as bad), but it seemed she was linked with numerous assassinations over the last fifteen years.  No date of birth.  No past that had been documented.  Little in terms of identifying information, save that it was believed she was in her late twenties.  She was ruthless, deadly accurate, and a master martial artist.  She was a ghost, just like the Winter Soldier had been.  Linked apparently to HYDRA.  Linked definitely to the KGB.  But whether or not Yelena Belova and Natalia Romanova were two separate people…  That was particularly unclear.  The information analysts at SHIELD who had prepared these reports (reports generated before Natasha had come to work for SHIELD, so they were somewhat dated) hadn’t been certain if they were two distinct agents operating for Russian interests or one person using multiple aliases, identities, and the same codename.  The confusion had apparently been so severe that Fury had sent Hawkeye out on his mission to eliminate Black Widow with orders to kill Natalia Romanova or Yelena Belova or both.  Belova was credited with some thefts and murders from 2009 to earlier this year, but her activity was sporadic.  Still, that had been when Natasha was with SHIELD, so it _couldn’t_ have been her.  Belova was impersonating Black Widow.  That _had_ to be the truth.

Although he wanted to believe that, Sam couldn’t convince himself it was right.  It didn’t look good, and he had to admit it, both to himself and Steve.  There was substantial reason to doubt.  Steve was driving as Sam read through all the data and reported the salient points.  His heart ached more and more with dread as he did.  As he went along, trying to digest the story, trying to put the puzzle together without all of the pieces or _any_ idea of what it was supposed to look like, he became increasingly certain of one thing: Steve hadn’t known about any of this.  That either meant Natasha was entirely innocent, or she was a double agent.  It meant either she was an Avenger and the woman who loved Captain America, or she was the best, _most heartless_ liar in history.

Sam knew next to nothing about Natasha, only what he’d read from SHIELD’s files and what he’d experienced of her firsthand during the nightmare over the summer.  The woman who’d gone on the run with him from SHIELD, who’d tried her best to keep that USB drive with Zola’s algorithm away from their enemies, who would have done _anything_ to save the man she loved…  It hurt to even consider all of that might have been a lie.  And it hurt to have to ask Steve about any of this, but he had to.  “Natasha ever say anything about this Belova woman?”

“No,” Steve answered evenly.

“Think she covered it up?  Lied about it?”

“I never knew to ask.  I had no idea Black Widow had multiple aliases.  Should have, probably.  Everybody kept telling me Natasha wasn’t what she seemed.”  Sam gritted his teeth in frustration.  He recalled the conversation he’d had with Steve in New York right before the Avengers had left to stop Pierce and Project: Insight.  He knew what was coming before Steve even said it.  “She’s lied to me before.”  What Steve said next was fairly shocking, however.  “She knew about Bucky.”

Steve announced that so calmly, so easily.  Like he was numb.  Like nothing could hurt him anymore.  He had been this way, surprisingly complacent with the possibility that his lover was in fact consorting with the enemy, since he’d showered in Zürich.  He’d gone into the bathroom at the hotel shaken and crushed, and he’d come out hardened, robotic almost, so damn focused and seemingly apathetic.  Denial and avoidance.  Compartmentalization.

But more than how he’d said it, there was _what_ he’d said.  Of all the awful explanations for Steve and Natasha’s seeming breakup teasing through Sam’s thoughts over the past couple of weeks, this hadn’t been even remotely on the radar.  Sam grimaced, shaking his head and rattled down to his core.  “What do you mean, ‘she knew about Bucky’?  She knew he was the Winter Soldier?”  Steve nodded.  “How did she find out?”

“She claims she just figured it out.”

“How the hell could she have just figured it out?”

“She knew him from before.  From when she was in the Red Room.”

“The Winter Soldier was with the Red Room?”

“It wasn’t clear from what she told me.  Maybe.  He was with the KGB at least, handled by someone named Lukin.  Natasha said Brushov ordered her to work with Bucky on a mission.”

That was difficult to accept, but once Sam overcame his anger and alarm, he supposed it made sense.  “So she recognized him?”

Steve shifted _._   Breathed shallowly.  “Yes.”

“That’s it?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re lying.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

Obviously there was more to it.  A lot more.  Sam’s mind raced in a million different directions at once.  Black Widow had worked with the Winter Soldier.  That was disturbing enough in and of itself, but he didn’t think Steve wouldn’t have turned his back on her for that.  And then he read between the lines and it all clicked into place.

Romanoff had had an affair with Barnes.

Sam closed his eyes.  _Because this situation can’t get any more fucked up.  Christ._ God, this was worse.  _Everything_ was now in horrific context.  It all made sense.  Steve’s behavior.  Natasha’s.  What had torn them apart.  What had ripped them away from one another when they both needed each other so badly.  It had probably been years ago that it had happened, years before Steve and before the Avengers and before SHIELD.  Considering what he knew of Black Widow, it was probably a logical product of the lives she and Barnes had lived.

However, something told him logic was a piss-poor excuse for a shield in any of this.  On the tails of being betrayed by SHIELD, betrayed by his best friend, _tortured_ by his best friend, Steve had learned that the woman he loved had, first, _known_ about Barnes being the Winter Soldier, and, second, had slept with him.  And then Barnes had shot Natasha when she’d saved Steve’s life.  That was a hell of a tangled knot.  Sam had no idea how Steve could have processed it and dealt with it.  He couldn’t fathom dealing with it himself.  This sort of pain didn’t just _go away_ with an “I’m sorry”.  That didn’t make what Steve had done in leaving Natasha right, but it sure made it vastly more understandable.  His faith in her was shaken, perhaps even broken.  And his ability to get past this was hinged upon him believing her.  Even if she was being truthful that she had just discovered the connection between Barnes and the Winter Soldier, this was a truth in the face of so many lies.  It was in the face of SHIELD’s lies, in the face of what she’d done in Crimea…  No wonder it was all falling apart.

And if it turned out Natasha was working with this Belova woman on behalf of HYDRA or the Russians or – _God_ – if she actually _was_ Belova…

 _She can’t be.  She wouldn’t do that to him._ Sam’s mind raced, looking through the data again.  If Natasha and Belova were the same person, then she had been part of the conspiracy from the get-go.  Everything that had happened would have had to have been a show for their benefit.  For Steve’s benefit.  Could she have been a double agent, sent to seduce Captain America and blind him so that HYDRA could launch Project: Insight unhindered?  The thought was disgusting, but it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility given who Black Widow was and what she had a history of doing.  Was it possible to construct something that elaborate and complicated so convincingly?  _Look what HYDRA did for seventy years.  I’d say yes._

Still, the more he contemplated that, the more unrealistic it seemed.  There was no way he could convince himself that Natasha had known about Zola.  She hadn’t known about what was on that drive.  She wasn’t so cruel, such a heartless monster, as to let Steve be captured and tortured on her account as part of some sort of plot.  He thought back to Natasha’s face, the way she’d looked when they’d talked in Stark Tower after losing Steve.  She’d been devastated.  _“When I first joined SHIELD, I thought I was going straight.  But I guess I just traded in the KGB for HYDRA. I thought I knew whose lies I was telling, but I guess I can’t tell the difference anymore.”_   He thought of her eyes, wide with abject horror and panic, as they’d watched Rumlow and Rollins and Barton beat Steve.  He thought of how she’d barely held herself together, the cracks widening under the strong façade, as she’d held Steve through the impromptu surgery that had saved his life.  As she’d suffered, unwavering in her devotion, through fatigue and grief and fear at his bedside afterward.

As she’d watched him leave her that day at Fury’s grave with desperate tears in her eyes.

 _Nobody is that good of a liar.  Nobody._  “What was the date?”

Steve’s brow creased in confusion.  “What date?”

“When Belova delivered the last sample of your blood.”

“July 31st.”

“So it couldn’t have been Natasha,” Sam surmised.  “We know exactly where she was when that sample arrived at the lab.”  She’d been in the hospital in DC, recovering from surgery, from being shot and nearly dying.  She’d been on goddamn life support.  There was simply no way she could have been the one to travel all the way to Zürich to deliver that blood sample into HYDRA’s hands.

“I know.”

Sam shook his head, surprised at Steve’s dead voice and emotionless eyes.  He expected relief or _something_ at least, but Steve was stony.  “Belova is trying to be Black Widow,” Sam said firmly, or at least as firmly as he could.  “Natasha had nothing to do with it.”

“Do you believe that?”

The question took Sam aback slightly.  So did his lack of an answer.  “Do you?”

Steve sighed slowly, like he was trying to find his way but just couldn’t see.  Like he desperately _wanted_ to believe, but he just couldn’t.  This was the first sign of any feeling from him in hours, and it was grief.  Resignation.  The pain of being burned one too many times.  “I don’t know what I believe anymore, Sam.”  If that didn’t describe this entire mess from its start to where they were now, Sam didn’t know what did.

* * *

They arrived in Prague the next morning.  Steve immediately wanted to go and scope out this Tower Imperica, the place where Vitalacorp had its headquarters and where SHIELD had last had eyes on Belova.  Sam convinced him to wait; it would be hard to snoop around in broad daylight, and they were both exhausted.  They found another hotel and got a room.  Sam checked over their supplies while Steve went out and found them something to eat.  They shared breakfast in silence, each burdened by his own thoughts.  After that, Sam convinced Steve to sleep.  Steve argued, of course, but the debate was without its usual gusto and insistences that Captain America could go without rest and Captain America was strong enough to keep watch and all of that bullshit.  Steve gave up and collapsed on the single bed in the room.  Sam sat by the window, watching the street below with a loaded shotgun across his lap, listening to Steve’s steady breathing and praying that it stayed that way.  It did.  Steve slept for a solid five hours, peaceful and uninterrupted.  He woke up, genuinely grateful (even if five hours of sleep did not begin to make up for the weeks of rest he’d lost, but Sam would gladly take what he could get), and they switched.  Sam’s dreams were dark and indistinct.  He didn’t typically remember what he dreamed, but whatever it was, it was unsettling, and he awoke feeling like he’d never slept at all.

At dusk, they ventured out, using the GPS on Sam’s phone to track down the Tower Imperica in the busy metropolis.  Steve had done some research while Sam had slept and discovered the building had changed hands numerous times since its initial construction in 1983.  It was comprised of office and laboratory space, but the owners had had a difficult time keeping tenants over the years.  Now it was undergoing significant renovation.  That made Vitalacorp’s choice of this place as their headquarters rather odd but not necessarily suspicious.  The owners might be desperate to get and keep businesses paying rent, so they could have offered up a nice deal.  Or, conversely, Vitalacorp was trying to hide something.  Considering that nothing was as simple as it seemed, that was probably the case.

They parked far enough away from the skyscraper so that they weren’t obviously waiting in the building’s lot but close enough that they could perform some basic surveillance.  The tower wasn’t nearly as large as some of the ones Sam had seen in his life, and the top of it was clearly under construction with steel girders and beams visible under tarps.  The back of the lot was filled with equipment: trucks full of materials, dumpsters, backhoes and cement mixers and two massive tower cranes that reached up nearly to the building’s top.  All of it was idle.  It was the end of the day, and people were leaving.  Sam watched them through binoculars.  They seemed a normal sort: businessmen, women in nice clothes, a few carrying briefcases and bags.  Average people heading for drinks or for home after an average work day.  Possibly HYDRA, but probably not.  Then again, they’d been fooled before.  They stayed low until it seemed like the steady stream of workers was down to a trickle and then down to nothing.  It was almost eight o’clock, and the parking lot and tower seemed silent.

  The night was very dark, the moon and stars completely obscured by the melancholic clouds which were still dripping drizzle.  They climbed out of their truck and grabbed their packs from the backseat.  Their weapons were already loaded and strapped to their belts and shoulder harnesses, larger guns hidden in cases they slung over their shoulders.  They waited another couple of minutes just to be sure it was quiet, hoods on their slick jackets up to protect them from the rain as well as from prying eyes, before heading across the street to the tower.

Their boots on the pavement were loud.  Sam heaved out a nervous breath, unable to completely ignore the anxious, nervous knot twisting his stomach.  “Screw _Bad Boys_ ,” he said quietly.  “This is _Die Hard_ , through and through.”

“Never seen it,” Steve admitted.  They were nearly to the building now, walking quickly across the wet sidewalks that shone yellow and gold in the streetlights.

“It’s a holiday classic,” Sam explained, glancing once or twice over his shoulder to make sure they weren’t being followed.  A neat row of shrubs lined the sidewalk, some tall enough to look like men.  But they were only shrubs.  “Terrorists taking over a skyscraper.  Bruce Willis kicking butt and taking names.  Yipee-ki-yay…  Never mind.  Just put it on the list.  When we’re done with all of this, we’ll watch it.”  They paused at the corner of the building, away from the main entrance.  “So what’s the plan?  We just walk in there?”

“Yep.”

“And say what?”

“Make something up.”  Sam gave Steve a doubtful look, to which he added, “Knock them out.”

Sam grunted his assent, and together they swiftly moved to the doors.  They were through the revolving door, Sam’s mind scrambling for some sort of likely story to placate the guards, the rest of him itching for the fight that was coming.  As it turned out, there was no need.  The lobby was empty.  There was a security desk, outfitted with a slew of video monitors, all of them dark.  Sam grunted his confusion.

“That was surprisingly easy,” Steve murmured, looking around in disbelief.

“Too easy?” Sam asked with half of a nervous smile.  Steve gave him a shade of a withering look before walking to the security desk.  “This could be a trap.”

“Could be,” Steve said.  He was staring at the directory beside the elevator.  It was written in Czech.  Steve’s keen eyes scanned over it, reading and digesting.  “Vitalacorp” was easy enough to pick out from the small list of companies.  It was on the 27th floor.  “You want to call it quits?”

Sam was frankly a little surprised by the offer.  Considering the driven, haunted look that had dominated Steve’s eyes for most of the last couple of weeks, he hadn’t thought Steve would even be considering backing off at this point.  And considering what they’d learned about Belova and Natasha, it seemed even more likely that Steve would be hell-bent on finding answers to either confirm or deny their fears.  But Steve looked at him openly, wanting his approval (or at least his acquiescence).  Sam drew a deep breath.  “We’ve come this far.”

That was it.  They decided to go further but not in the elevator.  If this _was_ a trap, getting into an elevator would be akin to locking themselves into a cell, so they found the door that led to the stairwell.  About halfway up the more than two dozen flights of steps between the lobby and Vitalacorp’s floor, Sam needed a moment.  They’d been climbing at a sprint of sorts, and he had to admit that he wasn’t as capable of prolonged physical exertion as Captain America.  The last couple of weeks (and the battle before that) had worn on him, so he’d hunched over and spent a minute catching his breath while Steve waited, not at all winded even though he’d been stressed and hurt far more grievously than Sam had been.  He stared at his friend, fully realizing for the first time since they’d burned that HYDRA lab how serious it would be if the super soldier serum somehow found its way into the hands of evil.  Sam didn’t pretend to know much about superheroes, about chemicals that conferred strength and resilience and speed, about technology that could make a man more powerful than he had been, but he knew damn well that Captain America was about the least assuming, least selfish, and most courageous man he knew.  What if that serum had been given to someone else less deserving, someone who didn’t hold compassion and valor in such high regard?  HYDRA had already created the Winter Soldier.  The Red Room had birthed Black Widow and the Red Guardian.  If the evil in the world actually found a way to replicate, reproduce, _mass_ produce the serum…  “Let’s keep going,” Sam grunted, and he took the next flight two steps at a time with a surprised Steve jumping to catch up.

They reached the 27th floor a few minutes later.  They stopped at the fire escape door, pulling guns and checking their gear.  Then, after sharing nods, Steve slowly pushed the door open.  The well-lit hallway beyond was carpeted in gray with off-white walls, nicely but not expensively decorated.   Before them was a vacant secretary’s desk, again decent but not extravagant.  There was still no one.  This was becoming increasingly eerie and unsettling.  A pair of double doors secured by an electronic keypad was at the end of the hall.  Sam thought for a moment Steve might just kick them down again, but he didn’t.  He fished in his pack for a small, black device, sleek and emblazoned with the SHIELD logo on its back.  He scanned the touch pad, and the instrument revealed the four numbers that had been pressed by the intensity of the fingerprint patterns.  Still, that didn’t help with the order.  That they were going to have to guess.

Thankfully, Steve was a good guesser.  He got it on the third try.  The doors clicked as the locks disengaged, and they pushed them open slowly.

Another empty, bland hallway.  Sam couldn’t keep quiet anymore.  “I don’t like this.”  Either this was a legitimate business and everyone was simply gone for the day (hell, that had been what they’d wanted and now he was finding the quiet unnerving?) or they were _definitely_ walking into some sort of ambush.  They headed down the corridor, guns ready and feeling increasingly stupid.  There were just cubicles, not even big ones.  Just plain, mundane, nondescript workplaces.  Computers that looked a few years old, somewhat outdated.  Pictures of kids and wives and pets on desks.  Coffee mugs and pencil holders and staplers and files.  This was an _office._   “Maybe this was a mistake.”

“No,” Steve said softly, scanning another cubicle but finding nothing.  “There has to be something here.”

Sam wasn’t sure he agreed, but he continued to follow.  At the end of this hallway there was another door secured by an electronic keypad.  Steve scanned that one, revealing a new set of numbers.  Sam nervously glanced over his shoulder as Steve punched variations of them in.  _What the hell are we doing?  Wasting our time.  Oh, and trespassing.  Breaking and entering._   What had he expected?  To find answers laying out on a desk, just waiting for them?  That these people, whoever they were, would be dumb enough to splay the HYDRA emblem all over their walls and files?

Apparently, yes.

Steve found the right code, and the doors opened revealing what looked like a command center.  Like a doorway to another dimension, this place was very obviously HYDRA.  The red cephalopod Zola had shown him and Natasha down in that bunker covered everything: folders, state of the art computers, and monitors.  And SHIELD’s logo was just as much of a presence, the stern, sleek eagle with its hard angles and lines very much a contrast to the curling tentacles and the menacing glare of the red skull.  A contrast by design, because it was all for show.

The two of them walked deeper inside, the door closing and locking behind them.  There were dozens of workstations, each locked with a passcode and a fingerprint scanner.  Neither of them was terribly proficient with this sort of technology, so breaking into the computers was pointless at best and dangerous at worst if security measures kicked in at their failed attempts.  That was frustrating, because Sam was pretty damn sure there was a _wealth_ of information here.  Maybe this wasn’t the heart of HYDRA’s subversive operations, but it looked like a major hub at the very least.  A place where HYDRA managed its missions.  An analogue to the Triskelion, maybe.  Any hope that taking out Pierce and SHIELD had destroyed the main body of the beast was slowly but surely being trampled.

A glass observation lounge wrapped around the rear of the room.  They went to that, feeling increasingly tense because no one was around and they were walking, unhindered, through an apparent stronghold of their enemy.  “Steve,” Sam said in a hushed tone, trying to keep his heartbeat slow and his composure steady, “we need to call this into Stark and get back-up.  We can’t handle this on our own.”

Steve acted like he hadn’t heard him, his hands tight around his gun as he kept going.  He made his way through the observation lounge, past luxurious-looking leather chairs, and into the room beyond.  Sam sighed in tight irritation, gritting his teeth and following.  “Steve!” he hissed.  “We need to get out of here!  I want answers, too, but they gotta wait!  Steve, I…”  Sam’s voice trailed off.  What was before them was more of a lab, a really small one.  It was dark inside, pale blue lights spilling from fixtures above white workbenches and counters.  In the center of it, there was a case, and within that there was a pedestal of sorts.  Clamped onto that was a spike of what looked like metal.  It was silver, so sleek and shiny that it seemed as though it was liquid.  It was maybe six inches long, as thick as a spike and seemingly about as sharp.  “What is that?”

Steve’s face was taut with confusion.  “No idea.  Obviously something important.”  He squinted as he circled the display case.  The blue light made his face glow oddly.  Ethereal, but not at all comforting.  “Didn’t you say this company made metals?”

“Yeah, for prosthetics.”  Steve thumbed a control on the case and the side of it slid open.  Sam jerked back, surprised.  “You sure you wanna be touching it?”  Steve didn’t answer, wincing like he wasn’t sure, but that didn’t stop him from reaching inside.  His fingertips moved closer and closer to the spike, and Sam found he couldn’t breathe.  Something about this just felt… _wrong_.  But Steve touched the metal, lightly and tentatively, and nothing happened.  He wrapped his fingers firmly around it, and nothing happened.  And then he just pulled it loose of its clamps, away from the pedestal, and out of the case.

Nothing happened.

Sam released a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.  Steve held the spike clenched in his palm, raising it up to get a better look at it in the dim light.  “Whatever it is, it’s heavy.  And kinda…”

“What?”

“Warm.”  Steve wrapped his other hand around it and spread his hands apart, like he was going to snap it.  He tried, but he couldn’t.  He looked up at Sam, worried, surprised, and a little dismayed.  He tried again, putting more effort into it, but the metal spike refused to give.  That was… alarming.  Sam had seen Steve bend iron, smash steel, and crack concrete.  The Hulk and Thor were certainly stronger than Captain America.  Probably Iron Man was, as well.  Still, not too many things could withstand the full brunt of Steve’s physical power.  Apparently this mystery metal was among them.

Steve seemed perplexed.  He gave up trying to bend the metal shard, staring at it instead like he was entranced by the way the smooth surface seemed to swallow the light in the room.  He swept his thumb over it.  “There’s something about this,” he breathed.

“What?”  There was a sudden clatter.  Steve and Sam dropped to a crouch instantly, eyes wide and pulses skyrocketing.  Keeping his form bent low, Sam scrambled silently toward the entrance of the lab so that he could see beyond into the observation room and the command center.  He heard voices speaking in a language he didn’t understand.  His own heart was pounding so loudly between his ears that he could hardly focus enough to tell if the men belonging to those voices were coming or going.  He glanced back over his shoulder to see Steve wrapping the shard in his sweatshirt, which he’d apparently taken off.  He stuffed it quickly into his backpack.  “What the hell are you doing?” Sam hissed.

Steve said nothing, fumbling a moment more with his shoulder harness to get it strapped on and his shotgun secured on his back.  He grabbed his Glock again and came closer to crouch at Sam’s side, out of sight of whoever might be passing.  The voices were getting more distant.  “They’re talkin’ about some kind of meeting,” Steve declared, his eyes glazed as he focused on listening.  Super soldier hearing was apparently far better than his own, because Sam couldn’t hear anything anymore.  “30th floor.”

“Who are these guys?” Sam asked softly, relaxing a little as it became more and more obvious they were alone.  “HYDRA?  SHIELD?”

Steve shook his head.  “Can’t be sure,” he breathed.  “They were Russian.”

Sam gritted his teeth, not sure what to make of that.  “We really taking that thing out of here?”

Steve slipped out of the lab, staying low to the ground.  Running like this was always more awkward and difficult, but he did it with such grace and efficiency that Sam was downright jealous.  “We should take it to Tony.  He and Doctor Banner can figure out what it is.”

“Just a friendly reminder that the last time you stole something important from the bad guys, it didn’t go down so well.”  He kept his tone light so as not to sound overly worried, even though he was serious.  Really serious.

“Consider me reminded,” Steve said, trying not to sound overly worried himself.  He was already running back through the command center, rising to his full height as it was clear they weren’t being followed.  They tore back through the hallway as quietly but as quickly as possible, retracing their steps toward the stairwell.  Steve burst inside and went _up._

Sam felt something sink inside him.  He caught his breath for a second, watching in disbelief as Steve took the stairs three at a time.  “Where are you going?  Let’s get out of here!”

“I think we should attend this meeting,” Steve announced breathlessly, though not because he was winded.  He was flushed with anger and excitement.

“Are you crazy?” Sam demanded.

Steve looked annoyed but stopped.  “We came to see if Black Widow or Belova or whoever the hell she is is here.  We came to get answers.  So let’s get them.”

“What happened to maybe calling it quits?”  Steve said nothing to that.  Sam shook his head, pointing to the ceiling.  “Steve, you want to go up there.  Into a nest of _HYDRA_.  Without support!”

Steve’s face fractured, maybe not in surrender but certainly in appreciation for Sam’s opinion.  He stood still a moment, hesitating, _torn_ , but not because Sam was convincing him not to go _._   “If you don’t want to come with me,” he eventually said when the silence grew too thick and troublesome, “that’s alright.  Go back down.  I’ll meet you back at the hotel.”  This wasn’t said with heat or disdain, but there was a touch of disappointment.  Not in Sam, Sam realized, but in _himself_.  Like Steve knew he should be listening, thinking this through more carefully, and coming to the same logical conclusion.  He knew it and was ignoring it and instead submitting to his emotions.  Steve heaved a sigh and emptily promised, “I’ll be fine.”

Sam growled in the back of his throat.  “Goddamn it, Rogers,” he huffed, running up the stairs and pushing past Steve to lead them on in this _stupidity_.  “Next time you show up at my place looking for help, I’m slamming the door in your face.”

* * *

The 30th floor was under construction.  Most of its exterior was finished with windows, but the job was only partially done so cold, autumn air was rolling inside and bringing with it the chill of rain.  Outside, the long arm of one of the tower cranes was adjacent to the building, dark and massive.  The other crane wasn’t far, lower, but between the two structures, it looked like they were opening their arms and trying to embrace the tower.  There weren’t interior walls on this floor, just studs and steel beams and the skeleton of more office space.  There was, however, an abundance of places to hide.  And that was what they were doing, hiding behind pallets of lumber, stacks of drywall, bags of cement, and idle equipment.  Darting from cover to cover, sneaking closer with alacrity and skill born from black ops missions and special training and years of military experience.  The voices in the distance grew louder as they approached.  Eventually they found themselves crouched behind a pile of sheetrock.  Steve moved down to the end of it, gun before him, eyes narrowed as he tried to get a good look at what was ahead.  Whatever this meeting was, there weren’t very many people involved.  Sam picked up three distinct voices, none of them feminine.  _So much for Belova being here_.  He forced his heart to stop thundering so he could listen.  And he was pretty surprised to hear the voices talking in English.

The first voice was deep, rough, and heavily accented.  Russian, it seemed.  Sam glanced over the top of their cover to spot a man in a leather uniform jacket.  It looked military, epaulets on the shoulders and insignia on the breast.  He was tall, lanky, with black hair slicked back and a goatee that was full and framing thin lips and an angular jaw.  He had dark eyes and seemed a cross sort, someone who tolerated remarkably little in terms of disobedience.  “It would be very unwise of you to back out of our arrangement this late in the game,” he said, glaring pointedly at one of the other men.

This man had his back to them, so they couldn’t see him.  His voice seemed somewhat familiar, though.  And he was very clearly American.  “I’m not trying to back out, General Lukin,” the man proclaimed.  _Lukin._ The same Lukin that Steve had mentioned earlier?  Sam glanced at Steve, but Steve was watching Lukin like he was trying to figure out what connection this man had with everything that had happened.  “I’m trying to tell you that this mess Pierce made has made things more difficult.  I have people watching me like never before.  The Avengers dumped all of SHIELD’s secrets on the internet.  Do you have any idea what sort of hell that’s caused?  I can’t do my job with the heat I’m taking.  And it’s not just me.  Stern’s been arrested.”

“Stern is a fat and lazy bastard,” Lukin returned angrily, “and I am beginning to believe you’re not any better.”

The man bristled.  “Now hold on here, you Russian prick,” he snarled.  “I don’t follow your orders.  I follow _his_.”  He pointed at the third man, who stood watching the two of them argue dispassionately.  He was bald with small, narrowed eyes and an angry visage.  Broad in the chest and tall, the man was all muscle, thick and corded beneath an expensive business suit.  He looked…  Maybe it was trite, but Sam could only label him as evil.  He glanced at Steve again, but Steve was still staring at Lukin, _glaring_ now with eyes that teemed with hatred.  “So until he tells me to do what I need to do, I’m not doing it.  Not for you.  As far as I’m concerned, you’re as much to blame for the disaster with SHIELD as Pierce was.  You and your broken pet.  You loaned him out, and look what happened.”

Lukin’s jaw tightened, but he ignored the jab.  “Pierce was foolish,” he snapped, “and greedy.  Project: Insight was doomed from its inception, especially with Captain America and the Avengers slipping in among Pierce’s ranks.  There was no way something so massive and gaudy was going to escape Rogers’ attention.”  Steve stiffened slightly beside him.  “But it’s no matter.  At the very least, the mess, as you call it, has weakened the Avengers.  And SHIELD being revealed as HYDRA does nothing more than create a convenient diversion.”

“For you,” the American answered sharply.  “I’m knee-deep in Congressional hearings and the press demanding answers and all sorts of _inconvenient_ nonsense.  Now, I want assurances that when the time comes, you’ll be ready on your end.  I can shut down NATO’s eyes and ears, but this is a one-time deal.  My allies are running a bit thin.  If you can’t make your move–”

“We will be ready,” Lukin returned tightly.

“You sure about that?  Pierce kept telling us he was ready, but he wasn’t.  What about the Avengers?” the man demanded.  “What if they get in the way?  You have no idea what sort of support they’re getting Stateside.  Stark’s fired up the media.”

“Ignore it,” Lukin coolly ordered.  He seemed to be losing his patience.  “The Avengers are not your concern.”

“I’m not going to just put my faith in you, General,” the man replied, “because I’m not going through all of this only to have it all shot down by–”

Lukin’s face broke in rage and in one huge step he was in front of the American’s face.  He wrapped his hand around the man’s throat and pushed him down onto his knees.  Sam ground his teeth together; he still couldn’t see a damn thing of the man’s face.  “The Avengers are not your concern,” he repeated again.

The American withered, choking, and Lukin spared a glance at the third man before releasing him and taking a step back.  “Jesus Christ,” the American spat.  “You’re a fucking animal.  All of you.  You’re goddamn lucky you’re paying me well, because I’d walk otherwise.  Then we’ll see how you can unleash your poison _anywhere_ , let alone on US soil.”

 _Poison?_   Sam could hardly breathe.  A cold chill worked its way up from his lower back, itchy and miserable, and he had to tense to quell the shudder.  Fury had been right.  A lot of rats hadn’t gone down with the ship.  In fact, Sam was starting to think the ship hadn’t gone down at all.  The ship was right here, and it was apparently sailing toward the US with a cargo hold full of some sort of toxin.  What the hell were these people up to?

“Make a move on the Avengers now,” the American sputtered, apparently undaunted by how close Lukin had come to strangling him.  “You want information?  I have it all.  Rogers is _gone_ , out of the country.  The beast’s away.  No one’s seen the Asgardian for months.  Stark’s running it all by himself, and things are compromised in ways he can’t even fathom.  It’s just him and–”

“No.”  It was the third man who said that.  His voice was a low rumble of finality.

This American guy just couldn’t take the hint.  He seemed like the sort who was accustomed to _his_ voice being the one the spoke the final word.  “Send your monster over there.  Take them out one at a time while they’re divided and leaderless.  Take out Iron Man first.”

“We must get what we need from Romanoff,” the third man said.  Steve stiffened again.  He closed his eyes, turning away and tipping the back of his head against the sheetrock behind them.  Sam saw him clench his hand into a fist so hard that his knuckles turned white.  “Until that time, this operation cannot go forward.”  The American pushed himself back to his feet, wiping the construction dust off of his suit.  The man glowered at him, and the slighter man seemed to shrivel.  “And until that time, you will stay in your place.  Strucker will stay in his.  And you–”  He turned to Lukin, not entirely pleased.  “You will abide by me.  Your… _ambitions_ have not fared well.  It was not only Pierce’s arrogance that cost us.  HYDRA’s foundation flounders.  We need a new direction, and that direction will be mine and mine alone.  Not Pierce’s.  And not yours.  I desire anarchy, not order.”  He hissed something in Russian, something Sam couldn’t understand.  Lukin actually paled; whoever this man was, he was powerful enough to make a general in the Russian army afraid.

Lukin never had the chance to defend himself.  He turned, seemed to catch a glimpse of _something_ out the huge windows behind them, and then he dropped to the floor.  It was not a second too soon.  The windows to the left exploded, a burst of glass followed by a howl of wind.  Sam’s heart lurched into his throat as he heard the distinctive _crack_ of a sniper rifle firing.  Two times.  Three.  Wood was ripped apart.  Holes were punched into concrete.  It took him a moment to realize whoever was shooting _wasn’t_ shooting at him and Steve.  The sniper was shooting at Lukin.

The three men scrambled for cover, the American howling in terror, Lukin barking into a phone he’d pulled from his military jacket.  “Shit,” Sam breathed, glancing over at Steve.  They needed to get out of there.  He wasn’t sure what Lukin was yelling, but he knew the tone well enough.  A commanding officer shouting desperate orders to his troops.

They needed to get out of there _right now._

The sniper had abandoned his rifle and was unloading an automatic weapon of some sort now, peppering the entire floor with a heavy barrage of bullets.  Steve grabbed Sam by the shirt and hauled him away from their hiding place as it was riddled with gunfire.  They staggered back toward the stairs, staying low, the world exploding around them in a rain of shards and dust and debris.  They took cover behind another pile of sheetrock, Sam darting around the corner and Steve sliding over the top.  Before they even had the chance to catch their breaths, the doors to the elevator across the floor opened and a dozen armed men stampeded out.  _Not good._

Sam and Steve were spotted immediately of course.  And the men opened fire, Kalashnikovs spitting bullets at them.  The two friends separated, scrambling for better cover.  Sam saw Steve returning fire, and one of the men fell, but they were all outfitted with combat gear, Kevlar vests and the like, so most of Steve’s shots were useless.  Sam grimaced, holstering the handgun and reaching for his shotgun.  The floor behind them was ripped apart anew by the sniper.  As Steve charged forward to engage the soldiers, Sam hazarded a glance behind him to see bullets tearing through _everything_ in their path.  But Lukin and the two other men were gone.

A shrill cry drew his attention, and he turned back to the fray in front of him.  Steve moved like lightning, so damn _fast_ , disarming one man and then turning his gun on his comrades.  The men scattered, trying to get away now that they realized the caliber of soldier they were facing, but it was too late.  Steve snatched a man by the vest and threw him into a stud across the floor.  The wood cracked and broke with the impact.  Bones crunched and men cried out as Steve cut through them.  Sam stood, unloading his shotgun a few times, blowing a couple of soldiers back.  But more were coming, one with a rocket launcher.

Terror left Sam reeling before he saw that the soldier wasn’t stupid enough to launch that RPG at them.  Instead, he turned toward the night, toward where they thought the sniper was, and fired the missile.  It careened like a bolt of light, hitting the cab of one of the cranes.  The explosion briefly shook the building.  Everything seemed to stop for a split second, the soldiers pausing to see if their enemy had been killed.  Then the tower quaked again, this time more so, as the burning crane crumpled.  Its arm slammed into the side of the building, scraping through the floor below them, and Sam thought for a moment this was where they would die.

But they didn’t.  The arm obviously met enough resistance to stop it from cleaving through the tower.  And the RPG hadn’t killed the sniper.  He was firing again, raining bullets on the soldiers with Sam and Steve caught in between.  Steve ducked, running with shots ripping the concrete behind his feet, frantically trying to get to the man reloading the missile launcher.  The crack of the sniper rifle resounded, and for a horrific moment, Sam thought Steve had been hit.  But the man fumbling with the RPG launcher fell like a ton of bricks, yanking on the trigger as he went, and the missile went up into the ceiling.

Sam couldn’t see, tears filling his eyes.  He couldn’t hear over the concussive boom.  He couldn’t move as the force of it threw him back into the frame of a wall.  And he couldn’t get to Steve as the ceiling came down on him.  Steve was trying to get up, to run away from the explosion, but it was too late.  Sam caught the horrific image of a beam smacking Steve right across the back of the head and dropping him.

“Steve!” Sam screamed in fear and frustration.  The floor was bathed with the glow of things burning and filling with smoke.  The echo of the blast was still rattling the tower, and it seemed for a moment the skyscraper was teetering.  But it wasn’t.  The soldiers closest to the explosion lay dead or dying.  Steve was crushed under the beam, prone and unmoving with the light of the fire glistening wetly in his hair.  “God,” Sam whispered, crawling forward on his hands and knees.  “Steve?  Steve!”

Steve didn’t answer, his eyes sealed tightly shut.  Sam pressed shaking fingers to Steve’s carotid artery, fearing the worst but finding a strong pulse.  Steve was out cold; no amount of prodding roused him.  Sam groaned, grabbing at the beam laying across his friend’s back and trying to move it.  Not a chance in hell.  “Damn it.  Oh, God…”  He looked around frantically, searching for something, _anything_ , to help him, but there was nothing aside from corpses, groaning men, and debris.

The thunder of boots drew Sam’s attention.  He peered through the heavy smoke and flames to the other end of the floor where more soldiers were coming.  Panic twisted his stomach into knots.   “Steve!”  He shook Steve’s shoulder anew and with more force, but it didn’t do any good.  “Steve, wake up!  Wake up!  Holy shit…  Somebody help me here…”  He grabbed his gun and pressed himself close to Steve’s body as the approaching company of men fired at them.  Sam shot back, keeping low and praying the wreckage would provide some protection.  One of the bodies near them on the floor was trying to get a rifle around to shoot at them.  Sam put him out of his misery.  He glanced over his shoulder at Steve and praying he was awake.  Steve wasn’t.  “Steve, goddamn it, you need to get up!  We’re in trouble here!”

Nothing.  Bullets slammed into the floor around them, and Sam instinctively covered Steve’s prostrate form.  He could see the soldiers coming closer, black forms moving in the smoke.  They were trapped.  The only option was to leave Steve behind and run.  No way in hell would he do that.  He gritted his teeth, tasting blood and smoke, and reloaded his gun with another magazine from his belt, feeling the seconds draining away and suffering with the mounting fear that these were probably his last.

The men charged through the smoke, but before they could shoot, they were all shot themselves.  Sam watched in complete shock as the entire wave of them fell.  Then he turned.

Through the smoke, a figure swung into the building.  Boots hit the floor hard, crunching shattered glass, and the man rose to his full height.  He was draped in black and shadows, a cloak of some sort around him that fluttered in the wind and dripped rain.  Even with that, Sam could see the metal arm, shining in the firelight.  It gracefully lifted a hell of a big gun, and the sniper unloaded another series of rounds into the next group of soldiers approaching before they could shoot at Sam and Steve.  When they were all dead, the assassin tossed the spent rifle and stalked toward him.

“Holy shit,” Sam whispered.

It was Barnes.  Mussed brown hair blew across his cheeks.  His jaw was unshaven, set firmly as though he was perpetually grinding his teeth.  His eyes were… hazy, filled with that same cold anger and lust for violence Sam had seen at Stark Tower, but not quite as _empty_ as they had been.  Even still, as Barnes came closer, Sam tensed with fear and clutched tighter to Steve.  All he could see was the monster, the monster coming after them, going after Natasha, kicking him off the Insight helicarrier…  He wasn’t going to let this bastard finish Steve off.  He’d do whatever he needed to, but the Winter Soldier _was not_ going to complete his mission!

Barnes grabbed him by the shoulder.  “Get up,” he hissed.

Sam remembered that he had a gun in his hand, that he could fight, and he nearly did.  But Barnes had already hauled him to his feet and shoved him aside.  He crouched at Steve’s form, and Sam’s heart nearly thundered out of his chest in horror as Barnes touched Steve’s head.  But before he could even open his mouth to tell the sniper to back off, Barnes had his arms around the steel beam.  He snarled, pulling, _lifting_.  He moved it enough to get it off of Steve’s back, and it thudded loudly to the floor.  Then he knelt at Steve’s side.  Sam couldn’t do much more than dumbly watch as Barnes carefully slipped his flesh and blood fingers down through Steve’s hair, obviously examining the injury, and lowering his ear close to Steve’s mouth and nose.  What Barnes thought wasn’t clear, his face still stony and taut with anger.  His eyes were softer, though, and his touch _lingered_ on Steve’s head, just for the briefest second, but enough for Sam to realize that, as crazy as it seemed, Barnes wasn’t there to kill them.

That became even more apparent when Barnes rolled Steve onto his back and hoisted him up into his arms.  “Go,” he said to Sam, slightly winded with the effort.  Sam didn’t argue, didn’t question.  This was absolutely fucking insane.  There was no other way out but the way Barnes had come in, not with HYDRA’s troops still flooding the floor.  He ran to the edge.  The arm of the crane was right below them, perhaps a ten foot drop.  Bullets ricocheted around them, narrowly missing.  Sam normally was never bothered by heights, but with the night swirling around them and the rain drizzling down and soldiers rushing them from behind, he hesitated.

Barnes didn’t wait for him.  He jumped fearlessly, Steve thrown over his left shoulder with his bionic arm tight across the backs of Steve’s thighs, and landed on the crane.  He didn’t waver or check his balance.  Sam watched, awestruck, as the assassin began to pick his way along the arm, holding onto the steel structure with his right arm and keeping Steve steady with his left.  Then the fire and soldiers shooting at him convinced him to finally move his ass, and he jumped, too.

Sam barely latched onto the crane.  The slick metal provided little traction under his sneakers so his right foot immediately slipped.  He held on, glancing down once.  The distance to the ground was dizzying to say the least.  He swallowed the burn of bile in his throat and moved as carefully as he could after Barnes.  The arm shuddered, balanced precariously where it was braced inside the building.  The cab at the other end of it was still burning, the fire sizzling in the rain.  Barnes was nearly there.  He charged onto the platform, uncaring about the heat and damage, and went to the ladder caged inside the mast.  Sam wondered for a moment how in the world Barnes was going to manage with Steve’s sizeable form and weight hindering him, but he seemed to handle it just fine.  Sam stumbled to keep up.

They raced down the series of ladders, Barnes climbing one handed below him, Sam focusing on good hand holds and footing.  If he slipped, he’d take them all down with him.  It wasn’t easy with his head spinning and his heart pounding and – _God_ – the assholes still up in the tower shooting down at them again.  The shots clanged against the cage around them; it was only pure luck that they didn’t get hit.  Barnes was picking up the pace.  They couldn’t return fire at this point, even if Sam wasted a few seconds trying and nearly plummeted to his death for his efforts.  Their best hope was that they reached the construction yard below in one piece and with enough time to escape.

Barnes climbed like a spider.  The wind pushed his hood off his face, revealing eyes steeped in emotionless determination.  Mechanical instincts drove his battle-honed and serum-enhanced body, that metal arm still tight on his burden.  Steve was limp over his shoulder.  It had taken a few minutes for them to climb down this low, and Steve hadn’t stirred once.  Sam couldn’t see his face from his vantage.  His stomach clenched in worry; he couldn’t tell if the wetness on the back of Steve’s head was rain or blood.

Finally, _finally_ , after a seeming eternity of silent struggle, they reached the bottom of the crane.  The top was still ablaze above them, sending hazy smoke into the clouds that was only noticeable because it was lighter gray than the pitch black of the sky.  Barnes didn’t waste a second, running off into the shadows.  Sam jolted, sprinting to keep up.  There were distant shouts, men coming from inside the building, guns being reloaded and angry words in Russian shared over walkie-talkies.  Sirens blared in the distance, emergency responders who were rushing to the scene.  Sam pushed all the strength, speed, and agility he could out of himself, but trying to keep up with the Winter Soldier was damn difficult.  The assassin was fleet, a shadow among shadows, and it was only Steve’s blond head and bulk that helped Sam trace the other man’s steps.  He was severely winded by the time he caught up to Barnes on the outside of the construction zone.  Barnes was leaning momentarily against a fence, not at all winded, and his face was shrouded anew under the cover of his hood.  He was watching fire trucks approach and listening for signs of pursuit.  Sam nearly collapsed beside him, fighting for every breath.  He couldn’t make his heart stop pounding against his sternum.  “Now what?” he gasped.

Barnes didn’t answer.  He turned like Sam wasn’t there and ran again, down the small lawn.  Sam made himself keep up, following yet another winding path through darker areas, behind shrubs and trees, and pretty soon, much to Sam’s surprise, they were inexplicably back at the their rental truck.

Barnes pushed Steve off his shoulder and onto the wet pavement beside the cover of the truck.  Sam scrambled closer, not quite pushing Barnes out of the way, but his fear of the other man was coming on strong again.  He tried to ignore it, to focus.  “Steve?” he asked breathlessly.  “Steve?  Can you hear me?”  Steve didn’t answer, seemingly deeply unconscious.  His face was pale, but aside from the huge bleeding gash on his right hairline, he was unhurt.  It was a miracle, given how close they’d come to dying.  Sam measured his pulse again just to be sure, shakily counting each beat.  His heartrate was strong and steady.  Sam released a shaking breath, relief washing him over him as much as the cold rain, and his hands quivered as he undid Steve’s pack from his upper body to lay him more comfortably.  Sam chanced a look at his enigmatic companion.  “We need to get him into the – what’re you doing?”

Barnes crouched, slowly reaching a hand to Steve’s forehead.  His fingers trembled, his face lax with what Sam could only describe as fear and confusion.  Sam watched his quivering hand come closer and closer, tentative and unsure, and finally Barnes laid his palm across Steve’s brow.  Steve didn’t wake or move, breathing slowly and deeply.  And Barnes closed his eyes, like he was remembering something or reassuring himself of something.  Sam didn’t know.  He was stiff beside the assassin, stiff and terrified, but maybe he didn’t need to be.  This seemed genuine.  More than just affectionate.

Brotherly.

Sam was speaking before he thought to.  “Thanks,” he whispered.

Barnes said nothing.  Did nothing.  He just kept his hand on Steve’s brow, and for the first time since Sam had seen the Winter Soldier, he _knew_ for sure that this man was Steve’s friend.  It was hard to let that realization sink in because it went against everything they’d suffered over the summer, the pain and rage and grief.  But it did, slowly and surely, because it was the truth.  This man, this _monster_ , was Steve’s best friend, and maybe he was worth saving.

Sam released a slow breath after a moment.  “We need to get him into the truck,” he declared, “and back to the hotel.  The head injury looks bad.”  He went about undoing the straps of his own pack; there were bandages in there.  Before he could find them, though, Barnes abruptly let Steve go and stood.  Sam shook his head, alarmed.  “Wait.  Hold on.”  But Barnes was already turning.  “Where are you going?  Don’t just leave us!  Steve’s looking for you!  Wait!”  He was already stalking away from them.  “Stop, damn it!  We’ve been trying to find you!  _Wait!”_

Steve groaned lowly, and Sam reached for him as his eyelids fluttered.  “Steve… easy.  I got you.”  He quickly turned to look behind him again, to call to Barnes and tell him to stay for God’s sake, but it was too late.  Barnes was running, his black cloak fluttering behind him as he did.  There was something on his back beneath it.  It was covered in darkness, but it was large and circular and Sam’s eyes had to be playing tricks on him.

Still, what if they weren’t?  What if…  There was no way to be sure – _it can’t be, can it?_ – but it had to be possible.

It had to be, because it sure as hell looked like the Winter Soldier was carrying Captain America’s shield on his back.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE:** Warnings for more talk of abortion. Warnings for me abusing comic canon to my ends and borrowing egregiously from other Marvel realms. And then just warnings for bad stuff. Poor Clint.

Clint was used to living his life as an agent of SHIELD.  He was accustomed to orders, to structure, to mission objectives and directives.  He was comfortable with that, with knowing what he had to get done and having guidelines about how to do it.  It seemed fairly incongruous to the life he’d led as an assassin for hire before Fury had recruited him for SHIELD, and this wasn’t to say he was always simply a complacent automaton following the wishes of his superiors.  He’d lost count of the number of times during his tenure at SHIELD that he’d been formally and informally reprimanded for impulsivity, for handling things his own way and being a loner rather than a team player.  But there had been someone _there_ to reprimand him, to remind him that he _wasn’t_ alone, and that had grounded him in a way he hadn’t fully realized until now.  In the wake of SHIELD’s massive collapse, he was feeling more than a little lost, more than just purposeless.  Adrift without much of an anchor.  This was freedom, more than he’d had since he’d been a freelance assassin, but it wasn’t entirely welcome, uncomfortable for its vastness and uncertainty.  The world was different, and he didn’t know his place in it anymore.

Aside from staying with Natasha, that was.  He wasn’t sure of much right now, but he was pretty damn certain he needed to be at her side.  She was going through something.  He didn’t know what, and she wouldn’t talk about it.  He hadn’t been lying when he’d told her he loved her back before they’d stopped Project: Insight.  He did.  He was coming more and more to terms with the fact that he did.  It was a quiet sort of thing, unimposing and without passion or hunger.  It was satisfied with what it was.  He was okay with that, okay with having let her go, okay with the friendship they had.  That friendship had survived what he’d done to Steve, what _she’d_ done with Steve, so that was something.  Clint didn’t begrudge Steve for having taken Natasha from him.  Natasha had never been his, per se, but they’d been close.  Clint had been the one to save Black Widow’s life and bring her into SHIELD, championing a second chance for her and working diligently to ensure she knew what to do with it.  They had been friends and lovers and confidants.  Partners.  After the Avengers had formed and the Chitauri had invaded New York, Steve had all but stepped into Clint’s place, both within SHIELD and in Natasha’s life.  The World Security Council had deemed Clint too much of a risk, and he was taken off the important missions he’d once done at Black Widow’s side.  Fury had reassigned Natasha to work with Rogers, and that had been it.

Clint was starting to think Natasha leaving him behind had been inevitable.  Rogers was a good man, strong and moral and stalwart.  The relationship he had with Natasha didn’t seem probable considering how different they were, but it had happened nonetheless.  He’d known right away, weeks before the fateful mission to Crimea, that there was something strong and genuine between them, something that went beyond partnership or even friendship.  Steve was good for her and, just as importantly, he was good _to_ her.  Natasha needed that, needed someone who could keep her open, honest, and trusting, someone who could remind her of the world beyond the darkness of her past, someone who could ground her and take care of her but not smother her.  Someone who could do all of that, be everything she required, while never demeaning her or blaming her for what she was.  Those few weeks between when the STRIKE Team had returned from Crimea and when SHIELD had fallen apart had shown Clint a side of Natasha he didn’t believe existed, one where she was completely at ease, relaxed, _happy._ Steve made her happy. 

Given that, Clint couldn’t dislike Rogers or think less of him or be bitter about losing a part of Natasha forever.  He just couldn’t, not when he’d seen the light in Natasha’s eyes and the smile on her lips and the almost dreamy quality of the expressions she’d permitted herself when she thought no one was watching her.  It hurt to let her go, but it was alright.  It was a good hurt, a bittersweet one.  But then everything had gone to hell.  SHIELD had imploded, and their world had been sucked into the black hole left in its place.  Clint had been forced to betray them for the greater good.  Steve had been tortured.  Natasha had been shot.  And something had happened between them, something horrible.  Something that had ripped them apart and left hearts raggedly bleeding.  Rogers had done something horrible in turn, something Clint couldn’t fathom him doing: he’d _left_.  While Clint respected the hell out of Captain America for his bravery and integrity and strength, he was pissed as all get-out that Rogers had walked out on Natasha and left them all in this mess.  And it wasn’t just that Natasha needed him.  They _all_ needed him.  The Avengers were all that remained of SHIELD that was good, that stood between the world and its enemies, and he was their captain.  Their leader.  Without him, they were barely treading water.

Clint didn’t like the feeling of uselessness so he had adopted a new mission.  He’d assigned it to himself.  Its directives were two-fold: first, stay near Natasha and offer up his support as she worked through losing both the foundation of her existence and Rogers, and second, figure out what in the world was wrong with her.  He knew her so well that he could see it plain as day.  There were physical signs.  She was pale.  She appeared fatigued and ill all the time.  He’d caught her running to the bathroom once or twice, looking queasy and distressed.  He was worried, really worried.  Maybe she wasn’t as recovered from being so seriously wounded as it had seemed.  It was only a month ago that she’d gotten back on her feet.  Was she still hurt?  Suffering from lingering side-effects?  Maybe there was something wrong, damage that hadn’t healed, and she wasn’t getting better.  He felt dizzy himself with the possibilities.

And it wasn’t just that.  She was troubled in a way he had never seen her be before.  He’d witnessed her uncertain, bothered, suffering beneath her masks and facades.  After a nightmare here or there that had woken her in the middle of the night.  After a difficult mission that carried her too close to her past, to atrocities committed by her or against her.  After Loki had gotten to her.  After she shot Steve.  This was more than that.  What she felt for Rogers was probably the first taste of real love she’d ever had, and losing that was likely devastating.  Watching him walk away from her had seemingly hollowed her out, left her empty and wanting and aching.  But it wasn’t even just _that_.  She was afraid.  Clint didn’t know why, but he knew that.  She was _terrified_ of something.  He knew that she knew that he’d noticed it, but he had given up asking her about it.  Their friendship had always been based upon respect for each other’s secrets.  If she wanted to tell him, she would, and he wouldn’t pressure her or push her.

Still, as rubbed raw as he was by losing SHIELD and being abandoned by Fury and by Rogers, Clint didn’t have his normal wealth of patience.  The bullshit Congressional hearings and the firestorm in the media had only compounded his frustration.  They’d been back in New York for about a week now.  A week of being cooped up in Stark Tower, escaping occasionally for a bite to eat or to wander around the city.  He was the one who was doing most of the latter, like an animal testing the limits of his cage.  He couldn’t convince Natasha to come with him most days.  Part of him certainly appreciated why.  With the media attention the Avengers were receiving, and Black Widow in particular because of her romantic relationship with Captain America, Natasha was trying to hide.  She was recognizable now, Clint less so, and the few times they’d ventured out, they’d been spotted by the paparazzi in addition to supporters and detractors alike.  She was stony and harshly dismissive with them, uncharacteristically reflexive, and Clint worried at her rattled composure that had led to those knee-jerk reactions.  Even if he was willing to express his concerns about her to someone, there was no one there with whom to share.  Hill had gone to Malibu with Stark to handle some sort of Avengers business.  The two of them were supposedly working together to privatize security in the aftermath of SHIELD’s collapse, which Clint assumed was a good thing.  The ex-Deputy Director had left with strict orders for Natasha and he to lay low and stay out of the spotlight.  They didn’t have to follow her commands anymore, but it was sound advice anyway, even if it did feel weird to be staying in Tony Stark’s multi-million dollar tower with only Stark’s AI butler for company.

But they weren’t prisoners.  Natasha was acting like one, and what was worse, she didn’t seem to care.  She spent most of the time sleeping or blankly staring out the window of her suite, lost in her thoughts.  This wasn’t like her at all.  Her past was dark and traumatizing, but because of that she didn’t dwell.  She didn’t stop and think, get maudlin or pensive or lost up in herself.  This was _not like her._   Something was seriously wrong.

She _had_ gone out by herself last week.  Twice.  She’d slipped out when Clint had been asleep, like she’d waited for the opportune moment to sneak away unnoticed.  She’d been gone for about two hours, and when he’d questioned her on her return, he’d done about as good a job at hiding his concern as she had done at pretending everything was okay.  She’d brusquely brushed aside his inquiries, glaring at him with a strong warning that he should back off and let it go.  He’d done that on the surface, but his mind was racing and he was investigating behind her back.  Either JARVIS hadn’t known where she’d gone or he was protecting her privacy, because he’d been useless in finding anything out.  The media hadn’t caught any images of her.  Frustrated, Clint resolved to stay closer and keep a more careful eye on her.  Something was up, and if she wouldn’t tell him, he’d find out on his own.

Therefore, as she left Stark Tower on a cold and cloudy Tuesday morning, he was right on her tail.  He was a spy, well-trained in making someone see what they wanted to see, so when she slipped into his suite to make sure he was still asleep, he waited until she convinced herself and left him before hopping out of bed fully clothed.  “JARVIS, keep an eye on her,” he ordered, giving Natasha enough of a head start so she wouldn’t think she was being followed.  That was going to be the harder part, given Natasha knew all the tricks (especially his tricks) exceptionally well.

“Sir, I do not believe it prudent to be prying into Agent Romanoff’s personal affairs like this,” JARVIS responded.

As odd as it was to be employing an AI in his espionage (an AI with a perfect British accent, for crying out loud), it was stranger still that JARVIS seemed to be so moral and indignant.  It was just a computer; why the heck had Stark programmed it (him – whatever) like this?  Clint grabbed his gun and his jacket.  “Do you give Stark this much trouble every time he asks you to do something you don’t particularly agree with?”

“Yes, I do,” JARVIS responded, “so I have perfected the art of bestowing a morally righteous reprimand while begrudgingly following my orders.”  His words were so utterly deadpan that Clint couldn’t decide whether or not the computer was trying to screw with him.  “Agent Romanoff is now down in the lobby, so the coast is clear, so to speak.”  Clint was down the hallway and heading to the elevator rapidly.  JARVIS took him down to the lobby, too, and when the elevator doors opened, the AI explained, “She went left.  I would hurry.”

He did.  Once he was outside, he shrugged deeper into his jacket against the chill and scanned the busy street.  His eyes were fast, devouring the scene until he caught a glimpse of Natasha’s red hair among the crowds of people.  She was already at the corner.  Now that he had her in his sights, keeping her there would be easy enough if she didn’t notice him.  That was a huge if, but, surprisingly, she didn’t.  She started walking briskly, crossing the street and heading towards Grand Central Station.  Clint followed, maintaining his distance.  The throng of pedestrians was substantial; it was mid-morning on a weekday, and the sidewalks were full of people going to work, tourists, and others going about their business.  The streets were also teeming with traffic, honking taxis and trucks and cars.  Even this far from her, Clint could see Natasha was tense and uneasy.  His work was made more difficult by the fact that she kept glancing over her shoulder, glancing all around her.  She wasn’t being very inconspicuous about it.  Anyone with careful eyes and any sense of training could see from her furtive looks and worried expression that she was concerned about being followed.  Clint felt his pulse pick up.  Where was she going?  Who would be following her?  And how could she be so transparent?

She walked onward, purposefully slowing in her stride so as not to seem hurried.  He slowed as well, staying carefully hidden within the crowds, moving among men and women to keep his location fluid and nonthreatening.  He felt the tiny bit of a bastard for doing this, but his concern was vastly overpowering his guilt.  He feared for a moment that she’d go into the train station as they passed it, but she didn’t.  And then he worried she’d hail a taxi; that would be significantly more difficult to trace, requiring him to rely on an untrained driver to maintain his pursuit.  But she didn’t do that, either.  She just kept walking, a very clear destination in mind.  If she was at all aware she was being followed, it wasn’t obvious.  That was sloppy and careless and very much not like a spy of her talent and experience yet entirely in tune with her disposition the last few weeks.  Her eyes were glazed like she was thinking, lost in her thoughts as she continually seemed to be of late, and then she’d snap out of her daze as if she was startled and look around herself wildly.  Clint couldn’t figure it out.  What in the world was putting her so far off her game?

His phone buzzed in his pocket.  He fished in his jeans for it before pulling it loose.  Sparing it a glance, he saw it was Sharon.  Working with Carter had been one of the few good things to come out of the disaster with SHIELD.  She was a hell of an agent.  She had apparently been assigned to protect and keep an eye on Steve by Fury, an assignment that placed her in deep cover and living across the hall from Rogers in DC.  Because of that, Clint had never met her, never even known of her, until recently.  When Pierce attempted to label Steve a traitor in order to have him hunted down and arrested, Sharon had unknowingly aided the STRIKE Team in apprehending him.  After discovering what Rumlow and the rest of the team had done to Steve, she’d seen SHIELD for what it really had been and switched sides.  She’d taken a huge risk, collaborating with Hill and hiding among HYDRA’s ranks within the Triskelion in order to aid Clint in stealing the targeting blades and rescuing Steve.  She’d been highly instrumental in saving Steve’s life, a fact for which Clint was extremely grateful since he’d been so highly instrumental in nearly ending it.  “Hello?” he said after raising his phone to his ear.

“Clint, hi,” Sharon said.  “How are you?”

“Fine,” he replied a tad breathlessly, trying to keep pace with Natasha as she turned a corner.  “What’s up?”

He thought he could hear her smile.  “I need a reason to call?”

“No, but I bet you have one.”

“Caught me red-handed.”  Sharon had gone to work for the CIA after SHIELD’s collapse.  They’d had lunch a few times in the last month or so.  Their experiences together in the Triskelion, surrounded by their enemies and struggling mightily to get their mission done, had bonded them.  It was a tentative friendship, forged by those traumatic and difficult experiences.  She’d been the one who’d been at his bedside when he’d awoken after being shot during the final fight.  She’d been the one to tell him about Natasha’s condition, to help him to her room and lightly embrace him when the pain and fear had dug deep into his soul.  She more than anyone understood the guilt and shame Clint was constantly feeling and constantly struggling to hide, because she’d been there, less of a participant and more of a witness, but she’d seen what HYDRA had done to Rogers and she’d been forced to let it happen, just as Clint had.  She was soft-spoken and no-nonsense, young but wise.  She was… she was _nice,_ and he found her pleasant to be around and a much-needed ally in their now twisted world.  “I wanted to pass some information on to you.  Are you busy?  Want me to call back?”

“It’s alright,” he said, sidestepping a stroller.  Natasha was moving faster now.  He didn’t think she’d spotted him, but it was difficult to tell.  “Go ahead.”

“No, really.  We just got a tip on something that concerns your friend Stern–”

“Everyone’s favorite asshole?”

He could hear Sharon’s smile.  “Seems he had some interests in some overseas operations.  It’s not that important, though.  I can tell you later.”

Perhaps that would be better.  “Yeah, thanks.  I appreciate it.  Can you call in an hour?”

“Shouldn’t be a problem.  Talk to you then.”

Sharon hung up, and so did he.  He stuffed his phone back into his jeans pocket, narrowing his eyes and watching Natasha finally stop right in front of a Hyatt hotel.  She was hesitating.  Then she went inside.

Clint watched from across the street, completely flummoxed.  He hadn’t known what to expect, but he hadn’t expected this.  What the hell was she doing here?  Meeting someone?  That was what people came to hotels to do, right?  However, if that was the case, who was she meeting?  And why wouldn’t she tell him about it?  His mind was racing with these questions he couldn’t answer.  He didn’t like not having answers.  That was perhaps fairly incongruous with being an agent for a large organization like SHIELD, but Clint wasn’t a tool and recent events had taught him that ignorance, especially willful ignorance, was pretty damning.  Momentarily he considered abandoning this.  Whatever she was doing, she didn’t want him (or anyone else apparently) to know about it.  Maybe JARVIS was right; it wasn’t prudent, or proper, for him to be prying like this.  It was Natasha’s business, and he was invading her privacy (like they had any concept of what privacy meant, but still).

However, he went on.  He’d come this far, and damn if he wasn’t getting more and more concerned by the second.  He crossed the street with a crowd of people and pushed through the revolving doors.  The lobby was nicely furnished, filled with golds and deep reds and shining marble floors.  There was a lounge to the left, but Natasha wasn’t there.  She also wasn’t seated in the spacious waiting area.  She was gone already.  _Shit._   He went to the front desk, pulling his phone from his pocket.  “Excuse me?”

A young guy manning the computer turned to him and flashed a welcoming smile.  “Welcome to the Hyatt.  How can I help you, sir?”

“There was a young woman who just came through the lobby here.  Red hair, in a black leather jacket.  She was in a hurry.  Did you see which way she went?  She’s my girlfriend, and she forgot her phone out in our car.”  He held up his phone.

The man seemed completely unaware of his lie.  “Uh, yes, actually.  She stopped here and inquired after a guest.  She should be headed up to the fifth floor.  You can probably catch her if you hurry.”  He pointed down the main walkway.  “Elevators are down that way.”

Clint smiled with excess appreciation.  “Thanks.  You’re awesome.”  He made a show of jogging down to the elevators.  One was already waiting, and he stepped inside.  He pushed the button labeled “5” and was ascending.  The ride took less than a minute, which was fine because the more time he spent thinking, the more anxious he got.  He hoped that she hadn’t already entered whatever room – _what guest?_ – to which she was headed.  If she had, he’d never find her.  The elevator dinged, and the doors opened.

As it turned out, he needn’t have worried.  Natasha was right there, standing by a little table with a floral arrangement on it on the other side of the hallway.  She was panting a little, her brow furrowed and her cheeks white.  She seemed like she was once again struggling not to be sick.  The sound of the elevator drew her attention, and she turned.  Piercing anger filled her eyes.  “What are you doing here?” she snapped.

“That’s what I was going to ask you,” Clint responded.  He stepped off and crossed the small distance between them.  He grabbed her arm gently but firmly.  “What is this?  Who are you seeing here?”

“That’s none of your business,” she replied icily.  She pulled her arm away and started down the hall, but her steps wavered with uncertainty, as if the fact that Clint was there was compounding whatever hesitation she was feeling.  He jumped to catch up, not willing to let her go this easily.  Something was wrong.  Something was seriously wrong.  “You followed me?”  The accusation was teeming with betrayal.

“Yes, I did,” he quietly returned, “which, by the way, was disgustingly easy.  You didn’t answer my question.”

“I told you.  This isn’t your business.”

“Not my business?  Natasha, you’re like a ghost.  You’re not eating.  You sleep all the time.  I know you’ve been sick.”  She looked away, the pallor of her face coloring with the hot rush of embarrassment and ire.  “You barely leave your room, and when you do, you skulk off to _here_ apparently.  What the hell’s going on?  Who’s here?”

“It’s nothing.  Back off.”

“Nothing?  If you’re mixed up in something, you know I can help you.”  He couldn’t fathom what.  HYDRA.  Demons from her past coming to strike her when she was low and exposed.  The thought was troubling, deeply so.  She cared enough about him to not drag him into her problems if she could avoid it.  Maybe that was why she’d been lying and dodging his questions.  “Is someone after you?  You have to trust me.”

She closed her eyes and looked away.  “Trust gets you nothing but pain,” she said lowly, her voice barely a murmur.

Clint’s expression softened.  He took a deep breath to calm his own rattled nerves.  “Look, I know you miss him, and I know he hurt you, but shutting off like this?  It’s not the way to handle it.  Things are fucked up.  I know that.  But I’m still here, and you _know_ I’ll help you.”

She physically deflated.  Slumped against the wall and tipped her eyes skyward like she was trying to quell tears.  He’d _never_ seen her like this.  He recognized that he kept thinking that, but it was so damn true.  She hadn’t been the same since Crimea, in good ways and in bad.  But she’d never been this _vulnerable_.  She told Stern she wasn’t, but she was.  She sure as hell was, and it was all kinds of disturbing and terrifying.  There was so little left of Black Widow, the woman who exuded poise and power and confidence, the woman who _never_ let her emotions get the better of her.  Clint felt like the Natasha he’d known and loved was dying, and he could only stand and watch and wonder why.

“You can’t help me with this, Clint,” she finally said after a long moment of silence.

“With what?  Why don’t you tell me and let me make that call?”  She said nothing to his offer.  He stifled his frustration, his love and respect for her dampening his own anger.  He took her arm again, this time in support rather than to stop her.  “Who’s here that you’re meeting?”

She sighed.  “Doctor Fine.”

His blood turned to ice in his veins.  A thousand thoughts rushed over him.  It was _exactly_ what he’d feared.  She wasn’t recovered.  She was still hurt, still suffering with the effects of that gunshot wound.  That explained her behavior, the lapse in her skills, _everything._   She’d come so close to dying; no one had expected her to survive, so much so that the fact she had had been a miracle.  It _was_ too good to be true.  She should have said something!  “Jesus, Nat.  What – I mean, how–”

“I’m pregnant.”

That came rather out of left field.  He couldn’t manage a thought, let alone a useful one, for what felt like forever.  “Pregnant?” he finally stammered, confused and pretty damn well shocked.

She regarded him coldly.  “Yes.  Pregnant.”

Clint was completely unable to get his mind around that.  He tried in utter futility until his brain decided to reengage.  It wasn’t possible.  Natasha had told him years ago, when they’d first had sex, that she couldn’t get pregnant.  The Red Room had made sure of that.  That meant…  Clint swallowed through a dry throat.  “I guess Rogers has super swimmers, huh.”

She stared at him, surprised, and then choked out an unwitting laugh, half her mouth curling in a smile.  That seemed to dissolve the tension a bit.  The rigidity of her form lessened.  She sighed, long and slow.  “I don’t know what to do,” she admitted quietly.  “What do I do?”

Was she asking him?  Maybe he was wrong.  This was rather out of his depth.  He had _no idea_ what to do, what to say, how to help her.  He was still stuck on the announcement itself.  Natasha sighed again.  “Fine’s been flying up to look after me here.  He wanted me down in DC, but…”  What she didn’t say was obvious.  Everything down in DC was too painful.  “So that’s why I’m here.  That’s where I went last week.  You wanted to know.  Now you do.”  She stood straighter, drawing something of a deep breath.  The glitter of tears was gone from her eyes like they’d never been there.  “And I’m late.”

She was walking again, walking rapidly and with renewed determination in her step, and that snapped him out of his stupor.  “Wait.  Wait, Nat!”

“Clint, go back to the Tower.  I can handle this.”

“Does he know?”

She looked right at him, as cool as she always was.  “No.”

Flabbergasted, Clint shook his head, reaching for her arm again.  “Then you gotta tell him.  Call him.”

“Stay out of it,” Natasha warned.  She stopped in front of one of the rooms.  “Go back to the Tower.”

He couldn’t do that, and he was about to tell her so when the door to the room opened.  Sure enough, Fine was there.  He relaxed at seeing Natasha, like he’d been worried because she was late, but his expression tightened right back up when his gaze landed on Clint.  “You shouldn’t be here, Agent Barton.”

“Well, I am,” Clint said tersely.

“He knows,” Natasha added, averting her gaze like she was ashamed, though whether it was because she’d let the secret slip or because she was in this situation in the first place, Clint didn’t know.  Fine looked extremely unhappy, darting his gaze between the two ex-SHIELD agents like he was struggling to find a way to get rid of Clint.  If Natasha wasn’t willing to dismiss him, he wasn’t leaving.  And even if she was, he _still_ wasn’t leaving.  That was probably bull-headed, but he knew he needed to be with her, now more than ever.  This was so far out of their comfort zone, out of the realm of possibility even.  She wasn’t going to go through this alone.

Fine submitted.  “Alright.  Come in.”

They stepped inside the hotel room.  Fine had the blinds drawn and the lights dimmed, like he was worried someone could be watching them.  It didn’t seem likely, as high up as they were.  Clint watched him don some latex gloves.  “Come sit, Natasha,” he beckoned.  Natasha took her jacket off.  She set it to the back of one of the chairs and stepped to the bed.  Hesitantly (nervously, if Clint was honest with himself), she sank to the side of it.  Fine was readying some equipment to draw blood.  A needle and a catheter and some test tubes.  He brought the tourniquet over as she rolled up the sleeve of her blouse.  Then he went to work.  “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” she answered.

“Been feeling alright?”

“Aside from wanting to throw up all the time, yes,” she said snidely.

Fine wasn’t off-put by her answer or her attitude.  In a matter of a minute he was expertly collecting her blood in the first of the tubes.  “Nausea should pass in another week or two.  It commonly goes away at the end of the first trimester.”

 _First trimester._   Holy shit.  Hearing that made this _real_.  “How far along is she, doc?” Clint heard himself ask as he watched and shifted his weight awkwardly.

Fine didn’t look back.  He seemed tense, like he was more than just troubled with Clint’s presence.  “It’s difficult to tell with how random and unpredictable her menstrual cycles are, but if I had to guess, I’d say about eleven weeks.  Give or take.”  Natasha paled a bit at that.  She’d surely known already, but hearing it again probably made this all real for her, too.  “No other complaints?  Cramping?  Spotting?  Bleeding?”  She shook her head.  Fine looked relieved.  “How about where you were shot?  That bothering you at all?” 

She shook her head again, her mood significantly flatter.  “No.”

“Alright.  Let me finish up with this, do a quick general exam, and then we’ll check the baby.”

Clint watched, feeling increasingly out of place.  This _wasn’t_ his place.  It was Rogers’, only Rogers wasn’t there.  This whole thing was so messed up.  He was still struggling to make sense of it.  Natasha was pregnant.  Natasha was pregnant with Steve’s baby.

Natasha was pregnant with _Captain America’s_ baby.

 _Holy shit._   The implications of that were serious, far-reaching, and potentially dangerous.  No wonder Fine wanted to keep this quiet.  Clint felt numb, like this was too much and he was trapped in it and overwhelmed by it.  _This_ was how Natasha had been feeling, probably for weeks.  Frightened and lost and confused.  He watched emptily as Fine listened to Natasha’s heart with a stethoscope and counted her pulse.  He measured her blood pressure, noting things on his tablet, pulling equipment in and out of the bag on the floor beside him.  “Alright.  Lay back.”

Natasha did, not entirely comfortable.  Fine fished in his things for a small box with a probe attached.  “Unbutton your shirt and push your pants down.”  Natasha did as she was told.  Clint resisted the urge to come closer, trying to keep out of the way, trying not to stare or pry.  It was hard not to.  Natasha’s stomach was as well-toned and flat as it ever had been.  That wasn’t so shocking.  However, the scar that ran down her lower chest that touched the top of her belly was surprising, not so much because it was there, but because it was so healed.  The last time he’d seen her injury and the incision from the surgery, it had been newly freed of its stitches, but angry and red in a way that suggested it would never disappear.  It was so faint now, a hint of silvery skin that looked years old.  That wasn’t possible.

Unless…  “The baby saved your life,” Clint softly surmised.

Fine looked over his shoulder briefly at the archer before he resumed examining the wound.  “More accurately, the super soldier serum in the baby’s blood saved your life,” Fine said to Natasha.  “Maternal blood and fetal blood don’t mix, but somehow the serum’s getting into yours.  I don’t have an explanation for it.  It should be studied.  I really wish you’d come down with me to DC.”

Natasha shook her head, her glossy red hair fanning out around her and looking particularly striking against the white of the pillows.  She hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her pants and dragged them down to reveal her lower abdomen.  Clint’s eyes immediately went to the scar right above her left hip where she’d been shot by the Winter Soldier years ago in Odessa.  The puckered skin was far more pronounced than the scar on her chest.  It was amazing.  “No,” she said evenly.

“You have to realize that this situation, this baby, is unlike any other in the history of humanity.  There’s a great deal we don’t understand about the super soldier serum, both genotypically and phenotypically, and your child may provide key information about it and about human DNA in general.  Obviously some of Captain Rogers’ powers, for lack of a better term, have already manifested themselves in your body.”  Fine shook his head, wanting to convince her.  “The chance for scientific advancement here is… well, it’s nothing short of incredible.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Natasha said.  Her tone was so cold that it almost hurt to hear.

Fine sighed in frustration, even though he was apparently satisfied with the state of her injury.  “Even if you don’t care about that, you need to be where I can keep a better eye on you.  This is uncharted territory.  There’s no telling how the super soldier serum could influence a pregnancy, let alone the fetus.  Not to mention you yourself have a lesser version of the serum already in your cells.  You should be in a secure place where emergency medical care is available.  As the fetus grows–”

“I’m not sure I’m going to keep it.”

The words were quietly spoken but they were powerful enough to stop Fine dead in his tracks.  His fingers retracted from where he’d been prodding her lower belly.  For his own part, Clint simply stared at her.  Stared like he didn’t quite recognize her.  Certainly he could understand why she might want to abort the pregnancy.  A baby would _never_ fit into how they lived.  Motherhood was not something Natasha would understand, embrace, or perhaps even value.  But it wasn’t the fact she was considering abortion that bothered him.  It was the way she said that, so heartless and bitter.

Fine seemed to gather his wits.  “If that’s what you want, we can discuss it.”

Natasha’s eyes flashed as she leaned up to glare down at the doctor.  “What is there to discuss?” she asked.  “It’s my choice.”

“What about Captain Rogers?  Don’t you want to at least talk with him?”

That seemed to give Natasha pause.  Not much, but some at least.  She sank back down onto the bed.  “He’s not here.”

“Agent Romanoff–”

“Doctor, I’ve had quite a few decisions concerning my body taken from me in my life.”  Her voice was even, devoid of emotion, but Clint could hear the trauma underneath her steady words even if she was doing her best to hide it.  “This one is mine and mine alone, and I’m _not_ letting it go.  And if you think I’ll be some sort of… _incubator_ for a science experiment–”

“That’s not what I’m suggesting at all,” Fine said, somewhat affronted but more aghast than angry.  The idea of Natasha aborting the pregnancy was obviously troubling him a great deal.  Fine had been very serious, very professional and almost apathetic, during the horrors of the summer.  When he’d been stitching Steve up in order to save his life.  When he’d monitored Natasha after she’d been shot.  He was practically oozing desperation to convince her to keep the baby, and that seemed oddly out of character.  “And of course it’s your choice.  I just want you to take everything into account.”  He smiled gingerly now, like he was summoning up all he could of his bedside manner to comfort a distraught patient.  Sweat beaded on his brow as he touched her leg.  “And to be sure.”

Natasha said nothing to that, as stiff as a board.  She didn’t meet Fine’s gaze.  She didn’t meet Clint’s, either.   She laid still and stared dispassionately at the ceiling.  Fine blew out a soft breath, glancing at Clint.  He seemed resigned as he grabbed a tube from his bag.  “This might be a little cold,” he warned as he squirted some of the gel onto Natasha’s lower abdomen.  Natasha jerked, and again Clint thought he saw the glimmer of wetness in her eyes.  It didn’t last.  Fine flipped on the machine in his hands and pushed the probe against the smooth expanse of Natasha’s belly, right below her navel.  He rubbed it through the gel for a few long seconds, the tiny box in his hands loud with noise as he did.  Clint realized he was trying to find the baby.

And then a steady, rapid _swish swish swish_ came from the speaker on the device.  “There’s the heartbeat.”  Clint had to admit he was a little bit shocked and a whole lot mesmerized by that.  He’d never experienced _anything_ like this before.  Fine held the probe steady, letting the sound stabilize.  He looked down at the screen on the scanner.  “About a hundred and fifty beats per minute.  Right on the money.  Nice and strong.”

The beats continued for a long moment, loud, _thunderous_ in the quiet.  Powerful for what they symbolized.  Then Natasha abruptly sat up, knocking the probe away.  She pulled her pants up, not caring about the gel covering her skin, and turned so they couldn’t see her anymore.  She was buttoning up her shirt.

Something beeped.  Fine set the scanner down onto the bed, reaching inside his suit jacket for his phone.  He glanced at the screen, looked decidedly displeased, and stood.  “Excuse me.  I have to take this.”  He answered the call, walking quickly from the room toward the bathroom for some privacy.

It was quiet.  Tense.  Awkward and teeming with things unspoken.  The baby’s heartbeat seemed to echo in the silence.  Natasha’s hands swept her hair free from the collar of her shirt before settling uncertainly at her side.  She didn’t turn.  She didn’t speak.  Clint swallowed through a dry throat.  “Natasha–”

“Don’t,” she whispered.  Now her voice was ragged, rough and pinched in barely restrained emotion.

Clint sighed.  He wasn’t going to just let this go, just back off and let her make a tremendous mistake.  He couldn’t.  He kept his voice calm and steady.  “You need to call Steve.”

Natasha let a long breath out before standing.  “No, I don’t.”

“Natasha, that’s his baby, too.  You _need_ to call him.”  She didn’t say anything to that, didn’t dispute it or dismiss it.  She smoothed her clothes, visibly attempting to gather her composure.  He’d seen her do that so much of late.  “You can’t just get an abortion and pretend like this never happened.”

“Why not?” she lightly demanded, like it was nothing.  Like she was planning on doing _exactly_ that.  Like this was simple and easy and clean.  “If he cared, he wouldn’t have left.”

So that was what this was about.  It was logical, of course, but for some reason, it hadn’t occurred to him that the fate of her pregnancy would be tied to her pain over Steve’s departure.  And for some reason, he hadn’t considered that she would do what she was thinking of doing, end the pregnancy without Steve’s input or opinion or even his knowledge.  That was cruel, heartless, and petty.  Bitter and vindictive and _not her_.  He couldn’t let her do it.  “No, if he’d known about _this_ , he wouldn’t have left.  He wouldn’t have gone if you had told him.”

“I didn’t know until after he was already gone.”

His anger was tempered by the hurt in her tone.  He sighed.  He didn’t know whether to defend Steve or take her side.  “I’m sure he had his reasons.”

“Oh, he made it abundantly clear exactly _why_ he had to go,” she returned angrily.  “He had reason after reason after reason.  All self-righteous bullshit.  He’s always trying to be so goddamn selfless, but you know what?  He’s _nothing_ but selfish.”  Clint stood still and let her rant.  Let her let this poison go.  “You want to know what’s important to him?  It’s not me.  It’s not the fact that the monster he’s out trying to save almost killed me.  It’s not that our whole world collapsed out from under us!  It’s not what we had.  He fucking walked out and let it all fall apart.  He left me.  He left me when I needed him!”

Clint winced.  “I know he did.  But you can’t let that drive what you do now.  You need to–”

“Don’t you dare tell me that I need to believe in him.  Don’t you dare.”

“Why can’t you?  Because he wanted time to sort things out?  Because he felt like he needed to go after Barnes and bring him back?  Because he thought he owed his best friend that much?”  She hotly averted her gaze.  He shook his head.  “Nat, you need to cut him some slack.  And yourself.  You guys went through hell.  You need to cut _both_ of you some slack.”

Natasha finally looked at him.  There _were_ tears in her eyes.  “Why should I?”

The answer to that was so ludicrously, blatantly obvious that part of him couldn’t believe he had to explain it to her.  “Because you love him.”  Natasha dropped her gaze again, like she was caught in her own lie.  Clint took a chance and came closer.  There was something about her that was raw and hurting, like a wounded animal backed into a corner.  But there was something else that was simply screaming for comfort, comfort that Steve wasn’t there to give her.  “Look, Nat, I know he hurt you.  He hurt you bad.  I don’t know what happened, but I’m guessing you hurt him just as bad.”  She flinched.  “But that doesn’t mean you have to throw it all away.  That doesn’t mean he doesn’t care, or that he put you second, or any of that.  It doesn’t mean he wanted to end it.  The things that happened to him?  That sort of stuff damages a person.”  He nearly lost his courage, his thoughts straying back to the dark hours in the Triskelion and the lies he’d told and the damage he’d done.  It felt wrong right then to be the one reminding her of these things, after the hell he’d put them through, after the argument he’d had with her over his role in all of it.  Still, this was what he could do for them now, and he was going to do it.  “You know that.  You’ve been there.  He probably doesn’t know what he thinks or feels after what happened.”

“He blamed me for things outside my control,” she said.  “He blamed me for–”  Her voice failed her.  “Maybe I deserved it.  Maybe this was all a lie.”

“No,” Clint said adamantly.

“He doesn’t trust me, Clint.”  Natasha almost wavered.  A tear dripped from her lowered face onto her hands.  Her voice trembled with pain and grief.  “He always told me not to run from my pain, and then that’s exactly what he did.  He didn’t even give me a chance to help him.  He doesn’t _trust_ me to help him.”

“He does.  He’s just too screwed up right now to know that.  And you know better than anyone that people aren’t perfect, even Captain America.”  She gave a small shake of her head.  “Maybe it’s a bunch of trite bullshit, but it’s true.  _This_ is love.  It’s not just sex and fantasies and making each other feel good all the time.  It’s understanding and forgiveness and selflessness.  It’s openness.  It’s believing in someone else no matter what.”  He set his hand to her shoulder.  He thought she might flinch, but she didn’t.  “That’s what he did for you after Crimea.”

“No, he didn’t,” she whispered forlornly.

“ _Yes_ , he did.  No matter what he says, he did.”  He pulled her closer.  “Listen.  I don’t know Steve all that well.  But I’d have to be blind not to see that he loves you.  When he figures things out, he’ll remember that he does.  He’ll remember how much he does.”

“Clint…”

“Call him.”  Clint took his phone out of his pocket and held it out to her.  She looked at it warily.  He stayed steadfast.  “You know I’m not going to judge you.  It’s not my place.  I can’t pretend to understand what you’re thinking, what you’re feeling.  I know kids don’t factor into our world.  I know you’re probably scared shitless and with good reason.  Have the baby, don’t have the baby…  It _is_ your choice, and you should make it.  I’ll stand by you no matter what you decide.”  Clint sighed slowly, shaking his head.  “But, Nat, if you end this pregnancy without telling him and he finds out about it, you’ll lose him forever.”

That finally seemed to reach her.  “I know.”  Her lips barely moved around the admission.

“That can’t happen.  What you have with him…  It’s what you need.  It’s what he needs, too.”  She nodded, blinking back more tears.  “So call him and tell him about the baby.  Ask him to come home.”

The relief he felt when she finally took the phone was almost blissful.  He gave her an encouraging nod.  She thumbed through the contacts until she found Rogers’ number, and she dialed it.

It went straight to voicemail.  Steve apparently hadn’t set it up because it was a default greeting.  Natasha pulled the phone away from her ear.  She was disappointed and dismayed enough that she immediately tried again.  The result was the same.  Voicemail.  Clint couldn’t help but be a tad bit concerned as well.  Sure, there were all sorts of logical explanations for that.  Rogers’ phone was off.  It was out of battery and he forgot to charge it (that seemed like something someone not well acquainted with modern technology would do).  He’d turned it off because he and Sam were busy or otherwise couldn’t be disturbed.  They were just out of reach for a bit.  Or he’d forgotten about it entirely.  There were plenty of perfectly normal reasons he wasn’t answering.

Then why did it feel like something serious was wrong?  Like Rogers was in trouble?

“I think I have Wilson’s number,” Clint said, taking the phone back from Natasha to look through his contacts.  Before he could locate it, though, he heard soft footsteps.  The fine hairs on the back of his neck prickled, and he turned.

Fine was there, and he had a gun in his hand.  A gun he was pointing directly at Clint.  “What the hell…” Clint breathed.  The sinking sensation of betrayal was still sharp and vicious despite its familiarity.  It hit the bottom of his stomach like a lead weight, heavy and miserable.  _Not again.  Goddamn it._

“I’m sorry,” Fine said softly.  The gun shook.

Natasha was white, but her eyes were narrowed.  Clint wondered if she was armed.  A few weeks ago he wouldn’t have doubted, but she hadn’t exactly been on top of her game recently.  “You’re HYDRA?” she seethed.  He closed his eyes, and that was all the confirmation they needed.  It seemed impossible.  It didn’t fucking make sense!  Fine was HYDRA.  _Fine was HYDRA._

That meant HYDRA knew Natasha was pregnant.

_Pregnant with Captain America’s baby._

“Why?” Natasha demanded, anger shaking her voice.  “Why save Fury?  Why save Rogers?”

“He predicted this.”  Sweat was rolling off Fine’s brow in huge beads.

“Who?”

“Zola.  His algorithm predicted you and Captain Rogers would become involved with each other.  The chances of him successfully impregnating you were high, despite the damage done to your reproductive system.  I was told to stay with you, do anything to get close, so that when the time came I could…”  Fine winced.  “Please believe me when I tell you I had no choice.  This wasn’t what I wanted.  They got to me years ago.”

Clint’s mind raced.  Zola predicted this?  The breadth of the situation was becoming painfully clear.  They’d been compromised again.  A mole had been right there, someone they’d trusted and upon whom they’d relied, and nothing was safe.  It wasn’t just Natasha’s pregnancy, although that was terrible enough.  Fury being alive.  Wilson and Rogers hunting the Winter Soldier in Europe.  Stark’s efforts to build a base of operations for the Avengers.  Everything they’d said and done since SHIELD had fallen.  “Oh, God,” he breathed in horror.  “You fucking son of a bitch.  How much do they know?”

Fine was nearly sobbing.  He didn’t answer.  “I’m sorry.  I can’t let you end the pregnancy.  They won’t let you end it.”

“I–”

“I tried to protect you.  I tried.  I thought if I could get you some place safe, maybe…  But it’s too late.  They know everything.  And they’re coming.”

Natasha blanched.  “Right now?”

Fine looked absolutely defeated.  He was shaking.  “I’m so sorry,” he whispered.  Then, in one jerky motion, he put the gun to his own temple and pulled the trigger.  The bang echoed through the room, and his lifeless body toppled.

There was no time to be shocked, to think or panic.  Clint moved.  He pulled his gun from underneath his coat and ran to the door.  Natasha was behind him.  She drew her own weapon and held it at the ready.  Clint glanced at her, and she nodded curtly.  He gripped the handle of the door and pulled it open.

Down the hallway, a half a dozen men were exiting the elevator.  They were dressed in suits and coats that proclaimed FBI on their breasts, but Clint could tell from the malevolent look to them that they were HYDRA.  HYDRA was everywhere.  In the government.  All around them.  Bringing down SHIELD hadn’t done a fucking thing to stop them.  “Go,” he whispered to Natasha. 

The men immediately noticed them, and they reached for their weapons inside their coats.  “Stay where you are!” bellowed one of them.  “You’re under arrest!”

“Go!”  Clint fired at the closest guy, taking him out, before turning and pushing Natasha in front of him.  They ran down the corridor, the agents in close pursuit.  They didn’t fire their guns.  Clint realized why immediately.  They didn’t want to risk hitting Natasha.  They wanted to capture her, kidnap her, take her to get the baby.

He couldn’t let that happen.

They thundered down the corridor, taking a sharp turn left and plowing into a family coming out of a hotel room.  A woman screamed, holding her children closer, as she was nearly knocked into the door.  “Get out of here!  Go back inside!” Natasha ordered, pushing them back into their room and shutting the door.  She moved away from Clint in doing so, and a couple of the men thought they could get a clean shot.  Bullets slammed into the wall beside him, and he returned fire.  He clipped one of them in the leg, and the guy went down.  His buddies were all too eager to take his place.

Clint grabbed Natasha’s arm and shoved her protectively in front of him as they started running anew.  The stairwell was at the end of the hallway, but getting to it was going to be a bit of a problem.  Another group of soldiers and agents burst through the fire escape door to block their exit.  That didn’t stop the two Avengers or even slow them down.  Natasha used their reluctance to shoot at them to her advantage.  In a flash the weakness, the uncertainty, the vulnerability was gone, and Black Widow was back.  She charged right into the group, cutting through them like a knife through butter.  She slammed one into the wall hard enough to break bones and then spun him, holding him in front of her like a human shield as she shot at their pursuers over his shoulder.  Clint dodged the swipe of a knife, sidestepping and ramming his elbow into the attacker’s midriff before tossing him over his shoulder.  He rammed his open palm into the next agent’s solar plexus, knocking him back, below elbowing him in the throat.  He felt more than saw Natasha kick one back, and when she ducked underneath the wide arc of another blade, Clint rounded on her opponent and put a bullet between his eyes.

Still, the men kept coming at them, trying to separate them, to pin them apart, and failing.  They were entirely ineffective even if they were highly trained combatants.  They were simply no match for Black Widow and Hawkeye.  The fight was fast, furious, and over in a matter of seconds.  All of the HYDRA soldiers lay dead or disabled at their feet.

Clint tossed his empty sidearm and grabbed a rifle off a body in front of him.  He snatched up another handgun as well and stuffed that into his empty shoulder harness under his jacket.  “Come on,” he said to Natasha.  She gathered herself, glancing at the slew of fallen attackers, before following Clint to the previously unreachable stairs.  They charged through the door and raced down the steps.  They had to get out of the hotel.  “This is bad.”

“Clint, when Stern was pushing for me to be arrested–”

“I know.”  Suddenly that seemingly innocuous posturing at the Armed Services Committee hearing gained a decidedly sinister ulterior motive.  Had Stern known about the baby?  If the government was involved (which seemed pretty damn likely given the slew of FBI agents they’d just fought), there wasn’t going to be any place safe in the country.  And who the hell could they trust?  _Stark.  Rogers._   Neither of them was there.  “Let’s just get you out of here.”

On the ground floor, they ran through the exit of the stairwell and found themselves beside one of the hotel’s ballrooms and conference centers.  Quite a few people dressed in business attire were gathered outside it, having coffee and breakfast pastries and fruit.  They regarded Clint and Natasha with wide, alarmed eyes.  The two of them didn’t waste any time, spotting where hotel staff was pushing carts loaded with more foodstuffs down a smaller, service hallway.  They charged down that, feet pounding against the red carpet.  That led them to the kitchen. The line cooks looked up at them like they were crazy as they pushed through the narrow aisles among the counters and ranges and ovens.  Toward the back was a walk-in refrigerator, and next to that was another corridor that Clint sincerely hoped would lead them out.  It did, straight to the hotel’s loading dock.  They jumped down beside idle trucks and ran into the side street.

There were sirens wailing, getting closer.  Down the other end of the alley he could see the city avenue, and they were SWAT vans pulling up and more police and FBI agents getting out.  Dozens of them.  He knew enough about government and military ops to recognize that in a minute, maybe two, they would be completely surrounded.  “We gotta get out of here,” Clint breathlessly declared.  “Now.”

“Clint–”

Whatever Natasha was going to say was interrupted by a huge, hulking mass of _something_ landing practically between them.  It was a person, a _huge_ person, someone who stood a good three feet taller than either of them.  The man – _is it a man?_ – had ashen, almost gray skin, and it would have seemed sickly if not for his gigantic stature.  He wore a brown cape that shrouded most of his body, but despite that Clint could see the outline of massive muscles.  Thick thighs and bulging biceps and a ridiculously broad chest that proclaimed strength and power.  His face was twisted with malice, framed in dirty blond hair pulled into a sloppy pony tail.  His eyes were red.  Blood red.

 _Holy shit._   Where the hell had he come from?  “Natasha!” Clint cried.  Before he could even think to raise his rifle, a muscular arm shot out from under the cape and hit him across the chest.  The next thing he knew the world was a blur and he was _flying_ , knocked through the air like he weighed nothing.  He hit the ground hard, rolling across the street, the asphalt ripping his clothing and his skin.  Coming back from the pain seemed impossible, but he did.  He had to.  Grimacing, he leaned up from where he’d landed in the middle of the road.  “Natasha!”

The FBI agents and the police were too terrified and shocked to even notice him.  They were firing their weapons at the man, whoever or whatever it was.  He grunted at them as if they were little more than irritants, like flies buzzing around him.  The bullets struck the alley and the buildings.  They struck _him_ , but they _didn’t_.  There was no blood.  No sign of damage.  No pain.  The man was completely unharmed even though he’d been shot dozens of times.

“What the fuck?” Clint whispered, shocked beyond any rational thought.

The man glared at them and then turned, turned back toward Natasha. She’d hidden herself behind one of the dumpsters.  He grabbed it and ripped it away from the building, tossing it dozens of feet into the air with one hand.  Wide-eyed and terrified, Natasha scrambled away, uselessly firing her gun.  The man reached toward her.

 _No!_   Clint ran before he thought better of it.  He jumped, bracing his left foot on the corner of the hotel to propel himself upward.  His right hit the top of the other dumpster.  He leapt and wrapped himself around the man’s back, arms across his neck and legs crossing his truck.  “Natasha, run!  _Run!”_

The thing below him roared, roared like some kind of monster, bucking and reeling and fighting to dislodge him.  It took everything Clint had to hold on, his heart shuddering in strain and his lungs barely delivering enough oxygen to his quivering muscles.  The world shook and shuddered as he was thrown around, but he managed to see Natasha.  She was watching, frightened, desperate to do something, reaching for Clint’s fallen rifle to fight.  _No._   She needed to escape.  Run.  Hide.  She needed to–

 _“Go,”_ Clint gasped.

The man underneath him slammed him back into the exterior of the hotel and all of the air was punched out of his body.  Clint’s chest exploded in pain, but he still didn’t let go.  He held fast, refusing to fail.  Refusing, until he saw Natasha’s hair fluttering behind her as she ran down the alley.  Until she glanced over her shoulder, and her teary blue eyes met his one last time.  They were filled with grief, with regret, with fear for him.  With a desire to help him, to not leave him like this.  But she didn’t stop.  She was obeying his wishes.  She was running.

She was gone.

He allowed himself a breath of relief.  Then he reached into his shoulder harness, somehow managed to grab his gun, pressed it into unnaturally thick skin of the man’s neck, and yanked on the trigger.  He _unloaded_ the entire magazine.  But the bullets did nothing.  _Nothing._   He watched in complete confusion, in terror, as they sunk into the pasty gray skin only to be _pushed back out_ as mangled lumps of metal.  It wasn’t possible.

He didn’t have a chance to even think about it.  The man used his moment of shock and his compromised grip to heave him head over heels.  The world spun again until he hit the ground hard on his back.  When his senses returned to him, he heard something clatter in the alley beside him.  He blinked back tears and focused.

It was a grenade.  Armed and flashing and counting down.  Probably thrown by the agents and soldiers in the street.  And it rolled to a stop right against his flank.  He moved fast, faster than he ever had before.  He got to his knees, snatched up the grenade, and threw it at the monster bearing down on him.  It hit the man in the chest and detonated.  Clint howled in agony.  It was so close.  Too close.  The heat of it burned, and the force threw him back into the side of the alley.  He hit hard, his head colliding with brick, and for a blissful second, he lost consciousness.

The second ended.  Smoke wafted over him, gray clouds that drifted languidly.  Clint groaned, but he couldn’t hear himself.  He coughed, but he couldn’t hear that, either.  He couldn’t hear anything.  Something was ringing in his ears.  Something shrill and deafening.

He blinked.  Through the smoke overhead, a shadow took form.  Large and looming.  He came back to himself with a rush of panic, and he tried to get up, to scramble away, but he couldn’t do it fast enough.  Something wrapped around his ankle.  Something else around his waist.  These things yanked him back until he was clawing on the ground, trying to stop it.  He couldn’t.

These… these _things_ had come out of the man’s arms at his wrists.  Long.  Metallic.  They coiled around him like tentacles, dragging him closer.  Clint couldn’t hear himself shout, couldn’t hear himself struggle.  He was doing both in earnest as the tentacles elongated, tangling themselves around his body, wrapping around and around his chest and pinning his arms down and squeezing and squeezing.  The man hauled him up, lifting him high in the air so that his legs were dangling.  He kicked out in vain with his free one.  The tentacles drew him closer until all he could see were those blood red eyes.  The man’s mouth was moving, talking, asking him something he thought, but he still couldn’t hear so it didn’t matter.  Those eyes narrowed in frustration, probably at his lack of a coherent answer, but that didn’t matter, either.

The only thing that mattered was that Natasha had gotten away.

Clint smiled at that, squirming as his ribs bent and his lungs constricted.  He struggled for enough air to snarl, “Fuck you.”  He didn’t know what the man was saying, but that seemed an appropriate response.  The monster grunted and smiled smugly.  Then those tentacles drew impossibly tight, and Clint screamed at the sickening sensation that his very life was being drained from his body.


	5. Chapter 5

The clouds were back.  Nothing but endless, formless gray as far as he could see.  Before him.  Above him.  They came down and pushed in, swooping like an eager if not ghostly embrace, and surrounded him completely.

Steve stifled a sob of despair as he stood in the fog.  He turned, eyes wild, breaths coming hot and quick with panic.  There was no way out.  He looked and looked.  “Bucky?”  Nothing and no one.  He was alone once more, and the nightmares were coming.  _Not again,_ moaned the miserable thought in his head.  “Bucky!  Where are you?”  Nothing but the echo of his voice in the void.  Panic rent his heart, desperation to _find his way out_ blazing, find his way to Bucky and bring him back and–  “Bucky!  Bucky!  Answer me!”  Nothing.  At least at first.  Then…  _“Bucky!”_   He could hear it, even if he couldn’t see it.  There was screaming in the distance.  He dropped to his knees, crumpling in pain, and buried his face in his hands.  Screaming and gunfire and the sounds of war and his friends hurting and dying and _not again please I can’t not again no no no–_

“Stevie?”

Steve lifted his face from his palms and blinked back his tears.  “Bucky?”

Bucky smiled his smile, the one he’d always had.  That was because he was the man he’d always been, with his knowing eyes and nicely combed brown hair and his three-piece suits that he thought won him all the dames.  He had one on now, gray with a red tie, and his bangs were slicked back.  He looked real dapper, a picture of life as it had been before the war and Project: Rebirth and HYDRA and SHIELD, but his eyes were filled with heavy concern.  “You alright there?”

Steve couldn’t lie.  Bucky always saw through them anyway.  “No.”

Bucky dropped to a crouch beside him.  His warm, familiar hand came to Steve’s shoulder, firm in its grasp, and if he noticed Steve’s flinch (because this wasn’t who Bucky was now and the Bucky of now was a _monster_ ) he didn’t let it stop him.  “What can I do to help?” he asked.  Steve didn’t answer, stiff beneath the curl of those flesh and blood fingers ( _not the Winter Soldier_ ) of his left hand.  “Hey.  You know I can’t ever stand watchin’ you cry, pal.  You don’t do it much, so when you do, it’s like…  It’s like the world’s gone to hell, and there ain’t no reason for it.”  _The world has gone to hell._   Steve still didn’t speak, but he wiped a hand across his face to brush the wetness away.  Bucky seemed comforted by that.  He gave a toothy grin.  “Now come on.  Let me make it better.  Who do I need to beat up?  Who did this to you?”

 _You did._   But Steve didn’t say that.  Truth be told, he was afraid.  He was terrified of his best friend.  He was _terrified._   But Bucky ( _not the_ _Winter Soldier_ ) noticed because there was nothing Steve could hide from him.  Not the fact he’d been beat up on the way home from school.  Not the fact that the bullies had been cruel enough with their insults that they’d brought tears to his eyes and an angry set to his shoulders.  Not that he was sick or that his mother was sick…  Bucky had always known.  And Bucky had _always_ taken care of him.

Bucky wanted to now.  Steve could practically feel it, like it was a tangible force between them.  It had been all their lives until Bucky had fallen from that train.  Bucky sat and wrapped an arm around Steve’s shoulders.  “Til the end of the line, right, pal?”

That was too much.  “Don’t say that,” Steve whispered.

“Why not?”  Bucky sounded affronted.  “It’s true.”  _It’s not.  It’s not true._   _We fell.  We died.  We froze to death.  You and me.  That was the end of the line._ Steve closed his eyes against the burn of new tears, dropping his head and fighting desperately to keep himself together.  The fog came closer, slipping inside his body like chilly poison.  It got harder and harder to breathe, colder and colder, and Steve started to shiver as ice prickled his lungs.  He drifted in it, lost in it.  Sinking in the ocean as the water rushed in through the shattered cockpit, as it beat him and crushed him and filled his body.  Dragging him down.  _I died for nothing.  We both did._

“Hey, Steve.  Don’t look like that.  It’s gonna be okay.  Always is, isn’t it?”  Bucky’s arm, warm and heavy, seemed to be the only thing anchoring him as the fog froze him from the inside out.  Steve couldn’t open his eyes; there was frost on the lashes, frost on his lips, frost in his heart.  Bucky didn’t seem to notice, didn’t let it deter him.  “Come on.  You just gotta breathe, buddy.  Do that for me, huh?”  He couldn’t.  Bucky shook his head.  “You’re lost out here.  Gotta find your way.  Up and at ’em.  On your feet.  It’ll be easier once you start going.  First step’s always the hardest.”

“Can’t,” Steve groaned.

“Yes, you can.  You’re Captain America.  So get up.”  Steve did flinch this time as Bucky grasped his arms and firmly hauled him to his feet.  He couldn’t make himself look at his friend, afraid of a punch or a slap or something _worse_ , but nothing came.  Nothing came because this was Bucky and not the Winter Soldier ( _is there a difference?_ ).  Bucky held his shoulders, stalwart and firm and just like he always used to.  Carrying him just like he always used to.  “Up, Rogers.”  Frustration colored Bucky’s tone now.  “Come on.  I ain’t never known you to quit.  Promised myself I’d never let you do it.  So it’s not gonna be today.  It’s not gonna be now.  I don’t like you fightin’, but that’s what you need to do.  Fight, because you’re losing it.”

“I’m not Captain America anymore.”  The words came unbidden.  He hated them, even if he was afraid they were true.  “Captain America and everything he symbolizes is dead.”

“Christ, that’s nonsense,” snapped Bucky, and his frustration turned into hot irritation.  “Absolute fucking _nonsense_.  You don’t think that.  That’s HYDRA’s bullshit in your brain.  I know.  I’ve had in my brain for decades.  It’s like some parasite eating and eating at you until you don’t know who you are anymore.  Don’t you see that if you give up now they win?  You’re smart, Steve.  Always have been.  So much smarter than me, and _I_ see that.  Why don’t you?”  Steve winced and tried to look away.  Bucky wouldn’t let him.  The ice was tight in his chest, spreading and spreading, and he felt heavy and tired.  But Bucky wouldn’t let him go.  “So what if they hurt you, huh?  So what if they brought you down?  Ain’t nothing that’s never happened to you before.  You used to stand back up.  You used to shake it off and get back up like it was _nothing_.  Why can’t you this time?”  Again Steve didn’t answer, so Bucky shook him.  Not to hurt him or scare him, but shook him like he used to, all fiery concern and shredded temper and frenzied need to make Steve see reason.  A thousand times and a thousand words before this.  All their lives.  _You can’t keep doing this, Stevie.  You can’t keep fighting them.  You can’t let them hurt you.  You can’t keep getting yourself sick.  You can’t push yourself so hard.  You can’t take care of your ma all by yourself like this.  You can’t fight this war.  You can’t be a soldier.  You can’t carry all this on your shoulders.  You can’t you can’t you can’t–_ “Why can’t you?”

Steve still didn’t have an answer.  “I don’t know,” he whispered.

Bucky’s jaw tightened.  “You’re Captain America,” he said again, like the tenacity of his tone could somehow beat the truth into Steve.

“I’m not.  Not anymore.”

“Bullshit.”

Anger came from _nowhere_ , surging through his limbs and blasting away the ice.  The fog was driven back.  He shoved Bucky back with it.  “I lost my shield.  I lost everything.  I lost _her_ ,” he snarled, “because of _you!_ ”

Bucky’s eyes glinted, and a hard expression contorted his face.  Suddenly it all came loose, flooding from him in a tirade.  “Bullshit!  I don’t care if you’re messed up real bad.  You need to snap out of this.  You need to _right now._   What the fuck’s going through your head, huh?  What the fuck is the matter with you?”  He came closer again, his own anger burning like fire.  Steve knew that expression well enough.  Bucky was stubborn, and when it came down to it, he never backed down from a fight, either.  “You think she ever loved me?  She never loved me.  She loves you, you dumb son of a bitch.  She used me, and I used her.”  Steve looked away, the heat of his anger trampled by the overwhelming burn of shame.  “It was one night, one night years before she even met you, and you want to crucify her for that.  You want to crucify her for not knowing what to do with the truth because it was so damn terrible she couldn’t bear to hurt you with it.  So what if she lied?  You know _in your heart_ she was doing it to protect you.”

Steve was just as stubborn.  So damn stubborn.  “I don’t know that.”

“ _Yes,_ you do!  And if you forgot it, make yourself remember, because you haven’t lost _anything_.  But you’re damn well throwing it away.  You’re wasting away out here looking for me.  You don’t know anything.  You don’t know what you need.  You don’t know what you want!  Christ, you’re supposed to be saving me.  How the hell can you do that when you can’t even save yourself?”

Steve gritted his teeth and shoved Bucky back again.  Hatred and resentment rushed in his veins, spite so awful that he let loose a wrangled cry that sounded nothing but anguished.  He practically rounded on Bucky, driving him down, so _angry_ that he could hardly believe it.  Hardly contain it.  Hurting another person because he’d been hurt, striking back in vengeance, retaliating…  He never had before.  Not even when his adversary deserved it.  Not even when he’d wanted to do it.  He wanted to do it now.  He wanted to hurt Bucky for everything Bucky had done to him.  To Natasha.  To _everyone_.  His hand balled into a fist at his side, and he squeezed it so hard his knuckles cracked like ice.  “You bastard.  I don’t know what I need?  _You_ don’t know a damn thing about what I need!  You don’t know how I feel!  You don’t know what it was like having you come at me like that!  _I trusted you!_ ”

“You still trust me,” Bucky asserted, undaunted and so damn forceful, “and you still trust her.”

“No.  No, no.”  Steve shook his head, struggling frantically like the urge to do just that and trust again was rising up inside him and he couldn’t let himself succumb to it.  “I can’t.  I can’t!”

“You _know_ it wasn’t my fault,” Bucky returned emphatically.  That wasn’t said with a plea that Steve understand or believe him.  It was said lowly and with certainty.  A statement of goddamn _fact_.  “It wasn’t my fault.  It wasn’t her fault, either.  They twisted us, turned us into weapons against you because nothing else can bring you down.  I’m not saying we’re blameless, but we wouldn’t willingly hurt you.  You used to know that.  You let their evil in your heart.  You need to get it out.”

“I can’t.”

“Stop saying that!  It’s bullshit!  It’s not you!  For Chrissakes, Rogers, what do I have to do to get through to you?  What do I have to do to knock some fucking sense into your thick skull?”

“Try using your goddamn metal hand,” Steve retorted before he thought better of it.  It was low and cheap and petty, but he didn’t care.

Bucky’s eyes blazed with hurt and rage.  “You know what?  I was right, what I kept saying back there.  I don’t know you.  Not anymore.”

God, how that _hurt._   The rage spilled out of him.  He shoved Bucky.  Hard.  “What gives you the right?  What gives you the right to say something like that?”

“I’m your friend.  Brothers, right.  Til the end of the goddamn line!”

“Shut up!”  Another shove.  Bucky growled and shoved back, but he followed, staying near.  Steve growled in frustration.  “Get the hell away from me!”

“No,” Bucky snapped.  He got his hands around Steve’s biceps, tight and harsh and unrelenting, and hauled him closer.  “No.  You listen to me.  I’m not gonna leave you alone.  Not until you listen to reason.  I promised your ma I’d take care of you, so that’s what I’m gonna do.  You let them break you.  All the times you’ve been knocked down, told you’re nothing, told you’re weak, and _this_ is the time you let it get to you.  Now, when you’ve got her.  You’ve got the Avengers.  And you’ve still got me.”

_“Shut up!”_

“You’re _lost_ , Steve _._   You can’t see a goddamn thing out here.  You’re blind, and you’re bleeding, and you’re happy to just let yourself _die_.”

He swung.  He wrenched his arm free and swung with a wrangled cry and with all of his strength.  He swung right for Bucky’s clean-shaven face, only Bucky vanished right in front of his eyes.  Steve stared into the fog, breathing heavily.  Shock coursed over him.  “You want to hit me, Steve?” came Bucky’s voice against his ear.  He whirled, yelling and punching, but _again_ he hit nothing.  There was no one there.  He wailed his frustration.  “You want to hurt me?  Beat the shit out of me?  Eye for an eye?”  Now the voice was to his left, and he turned, stalking into the mist.  He was angrier and angrier with each heavy, fast pulse of his heart in his chest.  This was rage like he’d never known before.  He wanted to hurt, to kill, to make someone else feel as low and broken as he felt.  He wanted to strike back for once.  He wanted and wanted–  “You want to hurt her like she hurt you?  You think that’ll make the pain stop?  It won’t.  The only thing that’s gonna make you feel better is letting it go.  And you know it.  You’re just being a stubborn ass.”

“No!” Steve cried.  “Not this time!  Not after what she did to me!”

Bucky’s voice came again.  “She didn’t do it to hurt you.  She’s not what you fear she is.  She never was.  It’s the fear talking, Steve.  It ain’t the truth.  You’re not seeing the truth.”

Steve spun and spun, searching again but this time to hit and hurt and break.  Anything to ease the void in his chest.  “How do you know?” he demanded, shaking with the intensity of his emotions.  The cold fog crept closer.  “How do you know?”

“Because you know,” came the simple answer to his right.  “You’ve known the truth all along.”

“No, I don’t!  I haven’t!”  Steve spun again, faster this time, and his fist finally struck.  It struck hard.  Bucky was sent sprawling, blood pouring from his nose.  He lay on the ground for a moment, panting.  Steve’s fist tingled where it had hit his face.  He stared, wide-eyed and panting, unable to believe what he’d done.  He thought back to the ship in Russia, to the Red Guardian injured and defeated and at his mercy.  He could have _ended_ him.

But he hadn’t.  And he wouldn’t hurt Bucky.  He couldn’t.

Bucky spat a mouthful of blood and groaned as he rolled gingerly to his knees.  “Mean right hook,” he commented, touching his fingers tenderly to his bruised face.  “You always did have one.”

Somehow that was enough to cut through his fury.  Steve went down again, down hard, and the second he spent falling seemed like an eternity spent sinking and choking and drowning.  He finally got the air into his lungs to heave a sob.  One.  And then another.  And another.  His shoulders shook, and the cold came back.  Vengeful and vicious and he didn’t know what he had to do to save himself.  He didn’t know what to do.

He felt like he cried forever, his hitched breaths and pounding heart thunderous in the quiet.  Then a tender hand came to his shoulder again.  “You know something, Steve…  There’s a way out of here.  A way back to who you were.  A way back to her.  A way to believe again.”

“Can’t find it,” he moaned.

“You will.  Like I said, I ain’t ever known you to quit.  I have faith in you.  Always have and always will.  I have faith in you bein’ strong.  I have faith that you can forgive.  I have faith that you can trust again.”

“I can’t.”  It was so strong.  The doubt and denial.  The despair.  The damage.

But there Bucky was, right with him, holding him.  Supporting him.  “Yes, you can.”  He held tight to Steve’s shoulder as he crouched in front of him.  His eyes were heated, blasting back the icy fog even further.  Heated and true and so real.  “Yes, you can.  You know why?”  Dumbly Steve shook his head, even though a part of him _did_ know why and always had.  Bucky smiled that same smile again.  “Because you’re a good man.”

Like a soothing balm, those words breezed into Steve’s head and into his heart.  The cold dissipated with a warm breath.  Another filled his chest.  Thawing and easing.  He was Captain America.  A good man.  _A good man._   Doctor Erskine had made him promise not to lose sight of what made him that.  He’d kept to that promise, no matter how much it hurt, because losing compassion would mean he lost himself.  Was that what had brought him here?  Had he lost his understanding, his willingness to believe in the goodness in people, his faith in those he–

“That’s right, pal.”  Bucky’s knowing smile grew softer.  “You can, because you love her.”  Steve watched him wearily, wondering, daring to hope.  Bucky’s grin never faltered.  It never had then and it wouldn’t now.  “So come on.  Deep breath.  One after another, just like we used to when you were sick.  Come on.”  Steve did.  He inhaled deeply, filling his lungs with warm air, and exhaled just as deeply, letting it all go.  One after another.  Bucky watched, proud and satisfied, and patted his shoulder.  “And up.  Up on your feet.”  His grip turned strong, and together they pulled Steve until he was standing.  “You know the truth.”  Bucky cupped Steve’s face, dragging him close for an endless moment.  Steve closed his eyes and sunk into Bucky’s strength without hesitation.  Without fear or hatred.  Bucky was still Bucky, no matter what he’d been forced to become.  Their foreheads were braced together, just like they had so many times in the past.  When Steve had been ill.  When Bucky had been down.  When one or the other had been hurt or lost or broken.  Together.  _Til the end of the line._   “Go, Stevie.  Find your way out of this.  Go find her.”

“What about you?”

Bucky pulled away and smiled.  “Don’t worry about me.  I can find my way out, too.  Go home.”

_Go home to her._

Steve opened his eyes with a soft gasp.  He blinked a few times, freeing tears that had been trapped beneath the lids, and sluggishly the world came into focus.  He was staring at something smooth and white, a plaster ceiling he didn’t recognize.  He was in a bed he didn’t recognize, too.  The mattress was a little lumpy, and the springs creaked when he shifted.  Moving was apparently something of a bad idea.  The rush of vertigo was unpleasant to say the least, and it brought the sharpness of a headache slamming into his skull.  But he closed his eyes and rode it out, breathing through his nose until he could stomach it.  He managed the strength and fortitude to sit up, grimacing as his head, neck, and back ardently protested.  He took better stock of his surroundings as he sat there and got control over his breathing.  This was a hotel room of some sort.  It wasn’t very big, but it was well-kept, clean, and had a welcoming feel to it.  There was a single dresser on the other side of the room and a nightstand with a lamp on it between the two single beds.  A window was open across from his bed, letting cool, damp air inside.  The sound of cars and people talking softly filtered up from the street below.

The door on the other side of the room opened, and Sam stepped out of the washroom.  His face immediately brightened with an easy, relieved smile.  “Oh, hey.  You’re awake.”  Steve was too disoriented to do much but stare as Sam set the towel with which he was drying his hands to the counter inside the washroom.  He rounded the end of his nicely made bed to come to Steve’s side.  He looked worn.  Weary.  Troubled, though he was fighting to hide it.  There were fading bruises on his face, one marring his left temple and another discoloring his jaw.  He was dressed in well-worn jeans and a faded blue t-shirt.  His eyes were bright, though, and his hand was warm as he laid it on Steve’s knee.  “How you feeling?”

Steve wasn’t quite sure, to be honest.  His head was in pretty bad shape, he realized.  He tentatively reached probing fingers to the right side of it above his ear and found a sizeable welt there that was seriously tender to the touch.  There was blood still matted in his hair, dried and tacky.  He winced, probing how swollen the area was.  “Yeah,” Sam said.  “You should have seen it a couple of days ago.”

“A couple of days?” Steve asked.  His voice was gravelly and rough.

Sam reached over to the nightstand and grabbed a bottle of water that was there.  He uncapped it and handed it to him.  “Yeah.  The fight at the Tower Imperica was the night before last.”

“You shouldn’t have let me sleep that long.”

“Dude, I didn’t let you sleep.  I couldn’t wake you up.  I was pretty afraid you’d…”  Sam trailed off, uncomfortable.

Steve flushed with shame and regret.  “Sorry.  I didn’t…”

“I know.  Drink.”

He did, taking a small sip at first but then gulping more greedily as his thirst won out over his nausea.  Sam watched him intently.  His eyes were filled with hesitation.  Steve didn’t notice that too much at first, his thoughts scattered and hazy.  Then the awkwardness became too much, and he managed to get his brain to focus over the dull pounding in his head.  “What’s wrong?”

Sam swallowed and leaned back, wiping his hands on his pants.  “Aren’t you going to ask?”

Steve was at a total loss, and the question seemed so weird and out of place that for a moment he wondered if he wasn’t still dreaming.  “Ask what?”

Sam sighed.  “The obvious question.”  He braced his elbows on his thighs and leaned closer to Steve.  “How I got you out of there.”

It hadn’t occurred to him.  He realized right away that it should have.  Vague flashes of the fight danced in his mind.  The sniper tearing the tower apart.  The men they’d been overhearing scrambling for cover.  HYDRA soldiers charging onto the floor and opening fire.  Deafening explosions and flames.  Then that beam coming down.  He’d turned just in time for it to hit him.  After that…  “How?” Steve asked softly, lost in the memories and the dawning understanding that Sam was right.  There had been no way his friend could have carried him down from the 30th floor of a skyscraper under heavy enemy fire by himself.

Sam held Steve’s gaze steadily.  “He was there.”

Cold surprise washed over Steve, ratcheting up the pain in his head, and it was all he could do to breathe.  “Bucky?”

Sam nodded.  “Helped me get you out.  Got us down to the street.  But he ran before I could stop him.”  Steve didn’t know what to think of that.  The world blurred out of focus; he wasn’t sure if it was from his shock or relief or dismay or simply from the agony spiking through his skull.  Bucky had been there.  Bucky had saved them.  _Bucky had saved him._   “I think he has your shield.”

“What?”

“Your shield.  I think he was carrying it on his back.”

As surprised as he’d been a second before, _that_ was even more alarming.  And oddly comforting.  That meant his shield hadn’t been lost or destroyed.  He’d thought it had been.  Stark had returned to the wreckage in the Potomac River a couple of times to look for it, but he’d returned from DC each instance empty-handed, so Steve had all but given up hope of ever getting it back.  The crushing force of the Insight helicarrier crashing into the bay should have obliterated anything in its path.  No matter how indestructible his shield was, it couldn’t have survived that.  But it had.  It had because Bucky had, and Bucky had found it.

Bucky had his shield.

“He must have been there for Lukin,” Steve murmured.  He hadn’t really thought to speak, but the words came out all the same.

“Maybe,” Sam agreed.  “Maybe he’s doing the same thing we’re doing.  Hunting down the past.”

Steve closed his eyes.  The image of the Winter Soldier was the stuff of his nightmares, and he was having a harder and harder time reconciling that with Bucky.  He went back to the dream.  Bucky in his three piece suits.  Bucky in his blue, wool coat with his hand on the trigger of his rifle.  Bucky in his army uniform and Bucky in his sweaty shirts and faded pants from working down at the docks and Bucky in a wife-beater and underwear, lounging around their hole of an apartment and complaining about the heat.  Bucky as a kid in his well-worn street clothes, running ahead of him but never so fast or so far that he couldn’t catch up.  Bucky was still inside the monster.  _Bucky._   “Did he say anything?”

Sam swallowed again, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he did, and he shook his head.  “No.  Not really.  He just… took off.”

Steve released a slow, wavering breath, not certain how to feel.  There was pain and doubt and grief.  But there was hope, too.  He wondered if he hadn’t subconsciously _known_ somehow that Bucky was there, following them as they were trying to follow him.  That they were inexplicably after the same things in the end.  Answers.  Revenge.  Redemption.  Maybe he’d dreamt what he dreamt because Bucky was with him, protecting him like he always had.  _“I ain’t never known you to quit.  Promised myself I’d never let you do it.”_   Steve’s faith in God used to be unshakeable when they’d been kids.  He’d been the one who’d gone to church just as their mothers had decreed.  He’d been the one to say grace before every meal and to chastise Bucky for taking the Lord’s name in vain and to pray like he’d never prayed before at his mother’s bedside when she’d been dying.  Since waking up in the future and seeing what the world had become, God hadn’t been so clear to him.  It was only natural to want answers when something so catastrophic happens, when everything and everyone a man knew and loved was lost, and answers hadn’t been had in church.  Natasha coming into his life had filled so much of the void in his heart, completed him in a way nothing else ever had or ever would, and that had made it easier to reclaim a bit of his shattered faith.  But this…  He didn’t know what he believed anymore, but God or fate or whatever forces there were had brought Bucky back to him when he’d needed him. _“I’m not gonna leave you alone.  I promised your ma I’d take care of you, so that’s what I’m gonna do.”_

Whatever hell the Winter Soldier lived, Bucky was fighting to find his way out.

“I’m sorry, Steve.”  Sam’s quiet, regretful tone reached through his thoughts.  His friend looked genuinely regretful, a tad ashamed like this was somehow his fault.  Like he’d had Bucky _right there_ and had let him go.

“No, no,” Steve said.  “It’s alright.  I just…”  Somehow this didn’t hurt as much as he thought it would.  That Bucky had been there and had slipped right through their fingers.  He still didn’t know how he felt about that or anything else, but the pain he was in, had been in…  It wasn’t so much.  So sharp and confusing.  So overwhelming.  “What happened?  To Lukin and the other two?”

Sam looked helpless again before heaving another sigh and leaning back.  “I don’t know.  I managed to get you into the car and I just drove.  I didn’t know if we were being followed.  Stayed in the car overnight that first night, then hightailed it to Munich.  Been here in this hotel since.  I was able to bribe the bellboy to help me haul your heavy ass up here.”

The extent of what Sam had gone through to get them to safety was becoming more and more clear.  Steve had been nothing but dead weight.  He sighed, swinging his legs from the bed and moving to the edge with a wince.  He pushed himself up.  Sam didn’t do anything to stop him, but he was carefully monitoring him for signs of distress.  The room did spin something fierce, and bile burned the back of Steve’s throat.  But he swallowed down the nausea and got control over himself.  The first ginger step was tolerable.  The second was even more so.  A few more had him over by the window.  He stayed hidden by the thick curtains, glancing outside and grimacing anew as the increase in illumination correlated nicely with an increase in the pounding in his head.  Outside it was lunchtime, maybe early afternoon, and the streets below were busy.  It was chilly, and the air was wet with another recent rain storm, but the sun was struggling through the clouds.  Steve closed his eyes.  “I’m so sorry, Sam,” he finally said.

“It’s not a problem,” Sam said.

“Yes, it is.  I got you into this.  You were out, and I hauled you back in.  What’s worse is I know I’ve been… still am–”  This he had to concede.  _Screwed up.  Scarred.  Broken.  Lost.  Blinded._ “–not myself.  I’ve been falling down, and I’ve been dragging you down with me.”  He turned and looked back at Sam.  Sam, who’d been nothing but a loyal friend to him.  Sam, who’d walked this road with him for weeks, abided by his nightmares and mood swings and trauma.  Who’d done nothing but support him.  Sam did him the honor of not arguing.  “So I’m sorry.  Real sorry.  I owe you.”

Sam stood and came closer.  He nudged Steve with a friendly smile.  “I know you’re good for it,” he said.  Steve felt a smile come unbidden to his own lips.  “Besides, considering the latest twists in this saga, it’s a damn good thing we were out here to see them.”

Steve had nearly forgotten about that.  Lukin and his discussion with those two men.  What had they said?  Something about bringing poison into the United States.  Something about a monster to take down the Avengers.  His heart sped as the memories resurfaced from the fog in his head.  “Did you call Stark?”

“Haven’t been able to,” Sam declared with worry.  He walked back to the bed and pulled his cell phone from his coat where it was draped over the end of it.  “I don’t know what’s the matter with this.  I have tried and tried to call, but it just keeps saying there’s some sort of network error.”  Sam handed to the StarkPhone to Steve, like Steve would be any more capable of figuring it out.  Steve thumbed through the screens to the contacts, brought up Tony’s number, and selected it.  The phone didn’t even trial to dial it.  “NETWORK ERROR” appeared on the call screen in bright red letters.  He didn’t know what that meant, but he had a feeling it was nothing good.  He looked helplessly back up at Sam.  “Yeah, so there’s that.  And I’ve tried using the hotel phone, even though it was risky.  I’ve tried a few times.  Even found a payphone.  But it never connects me.  I don’t know what the hell’s going on.  And with you out, there wasn’t much choice but to sit tight and try to keep an eye on things.”

Steve’s thoughts were a bit sluggish yet, but he knew right away that there was only one choice.  “Then we have to go,” he said.  “We have to warn them.”

“What about Barnes?”

He bit the inside of his cheek and handed the phone back to his friend.  As much as it hurt (and it really did – this was akin to admitting failure, abandoning the fight, _giving up_ on Bucky), this was what they had to do.  “It has to wait.  This is more important.  Something serious is going down.  That lab we found.  Whatever the hell was going on at the tower.  We need to get back to New York and figure it out.”  Besides that, whatever was going on with HYDRA, Lukin was involved.  If Bucky was hunting him, trying to get some sort of revenge…  The Avengers would cross paths with Lukin again if Lukin was plotting against them.  And that meant they could cross paths with Bucky.

Sam nodded, understanding what Steve didn’t say.  He folded his arms across his chest, hesitating anew.  But he didn’t continue with that for long.  “What about Natasha?”

Steve stiffened.  “What about her?”

“We still don’t know if she–”

“We’re going to have to trust that she’s not,” Steve said.  His voice was much stronger than he felt.  Words came back to him.  _“We must get what we need from Romanoff.”_   What did HYDRA need?  What could those men want from her?  His blood?  The serum?  If she’d really been involved in delivering blood samples to that lab outside of Zürich, then surely that was what they were trying to get from her.  Almost immediately, though, that suspicion turned sour.  Bucky’s angry words stampeded through his head again with the fortitude of something real even though they hadn’t been.  _“She’s not what you fear she is.  She never was.  You’re not seeing the truth.”_   What truth?  Steve sank into that for a moment, this mesh of dreams and memories and everything in between.  Natasha’s eyes, cold with the threat of violence.  Natasha’s eyes, warm with love, desperate with pleasure, open and beautiful.  Natasha’s hands, clenched around the gun she dragged up his face to his temple, the gun she held to his chest when she’d shot him in the heart.  Natasha’s hands, sweet and reverent, soft and tender in his hair, drifting down his body, her fingers tangled up in his.  Natasha’s lips, twisted in a possessive, cruel smile.  Natasha’s lips on his, so many kisses, passionate and tender and afraid and loving and _everything_.  Natasha’s heart, the cold, closed heart of a killer who uses her body to manipulate her marks into submission.

Natasha’s heart, the only thing she’d had to give him.  And she had, with eyes closed and hopes fervent and so much _trust_.

“Steve.”  Sam’s voice was soft, unimposing, but what he said was anything but.  “If she sold you out…”

After a painfully long moment of silence, Steve exhaled deeply.  That centered him.  “We have to trust she didn’t,” he said again, inexplicably finding some certainty in that.  Steve drew another deep breath and let that out slowly, again and again, just like Bucky had said.  He clung to his own words and made that certainty bigger and stronger and viable.  Something powerful enough to sustain him.  Sam seemed surprised, but he didn’t say anything.  “How fast can we be out of here?”

“Fast.  You should wash up, though.  Looks like you’ve been in a fight.”  Steve grimaced, glancing down at his rumpled, bloody clothes.  Sam set his jaw.  “Go.  Take a shower.  I’ll do the rest.”

* * *

Thirty minutes later, they were back in the rental truck.  Sam was driving, and they were heading as quickly as possible to the Munich airport.  Getting on an airplane back to the States wasn’t going to be easy.  They’d had Hill paving the way for them before, ensuring they had the proper paperwork, false identities and lies and funds to cover who they actually were and what they were really doing.  Without that, they’d have to fake something.  Their passports, forged by Hill (who had a ridiculous and slightly disturbing amount of expertise in fabricating legal records), would probably get them on the plane and through customs.  Still, they would have to abandon some of their gear (the weapons in particular), and if they were being tracked by their enemies, that was a significant risk.

However, not getting back to the others to warn them that something was coming was out of the question.

Traffic was thick, so it was slow going.  They sat in a not-so-comfortable quiet, one bordering on tense but not quite unsettling enough that either of them felt a particular need to break it.  This whole thing seemed somewhat monumental (though why, Steve couldn’t say).  Going home after weeks of searching, of tracing a trail that was nearly untraceable, of courting rumors and ghost stories, of chasing down the past.  They were going home empty-handed, but they were going home, and there was something comforting about that.  Even with all the uncertainty and unrest and things left unsettled, there was solace to be had.

Steve drifted in his thoughts. He was numb again, not feeling, not holding to anything too tightly.  Bucky.  Natasha.  It wasn’t avoidance so much as acceptance.  He watched the cars inching by them out the window, feeling strangely renewed.  Reaffirmed, though he wasn’t exactly sure in what or why.  There was a niggling voice of dissension creeping about his head.  Certainty wasn’t proof.  _Love_ wasn’t proof.  Nothing had changed from before that dream to now.  Nothing tangible.  Nothing logical.  And putting faith in something this serious because of a stupid dream was utterly insane.  Still, in this twisted world, maybe that made sense.  Nothing else did.  And maybe…  He had to forgive himself for the nonsense, but maybe he was trying to _tell_ himself something.  _“If you forgot it, make yourself remember.”_   That was what Bucky had told him.  Maybe he was trying to do just that.

“You okay?”  Sam’s question broke his reverie.  Steve looked over at him and found earnest concern, the same earnest concern Sam had had since they’d left DC.  He grinned half a grin.  “Sorry.  Probably tired of hearing me ask you that.  Can’t help it.  I worry about you.”

“I know,” Steve said softly.

“And, uh…  Well, this is gonna sound crazy, given you look like you went a few rounds with the Hulk and lost, but… you look _better._ ”  That did sound a tad crazy.  “I mean, you look more with it.  I, um…  Honestly, I spent the last couple of days since you got hurt trying to figure out how to tell you about Barnes.  And then I kinda decided I was just not going to tell you at all, because there wasn’t anything we could do about it and it would only hurt you.  Or piss you off.  Or both.  But you’ve had enough people keep things from you.”  Sam’s smile turned feeble, like he was ashamed to have admitted what he’d just confessed.  Given how unhinged Steve had been the days before the fight, if their roles had been switched, he might have considered the same thing.  “All that aside, though, you’re taking this surprisingly well.  And don’t take that the wrong way.  But you are.”

Steve didn’t take it the wrong way.  Everything was clearer now.  At least a little.  “I know.  I just…  I have to do what’s right.  I’m tired of feeling like I don’t have any control, like HYDRA’s holdin’ all the cards.”  He sighed through his nose, slumping wearily in his seat but not in defeat any more.  “I still don’t know what I believe, Sam.  But the things they took from me…”  _Bucky.  Nat._ “I need to find a way to get them back.”  That sounded good.  Something like the things he used to say, used to believe, before everything had happened.  His lips quirked into a rueful grin.  “Maybe that beam knocked some sense into me.”

Sam actually laughed at that.  “Maybe.  You got the bruises to prove it.”

Steve was about to say something further when Sam’s phone suddenly rang.  Neither of them had been even remotely expecting it, so it came as a serious shock.  Sam pulled his phone from where it was resting in a little cubby in the console of the truck.  Stark’s face appeared on the screen.  Sam didn’t waste a second, thumbing the answer button and putting the call on speaker phone.  “Stark?”

“Wilson?” came Tony’s voice.

Sam nearly slumped in relief.  “Holy shit, dude.  Do you have _any_ idea how many times I’ve tried calling you?  Your damn cell network is all screwed up and something must be wrong with the service at the Tower because I–”

“You two need to get back to New York right away.”

As if Tony’s words weren’t disturbing enough, the pinched tone of his voice was utterly dismaying.  Steve sat up straight as an arrow.  “What?” he demanded.  “What happened?”

“It’s Barton.”  Tony hesitated.  “Something attacked him.  He’s seriously hurt.”

“Something?” Wilson repeated.

“Is he okay?” Steve asked.

Tony sighed shortly.  He sounded irritated and worried.  Really worried.  “Was there a part of ‘seriously hurt’ you didn’t get, Cap?  No, he’s not okay.  The doctors…  They don’t know what’s going on with him.  He’s in some kind of… weird coma.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Sam snapped.

“I don’t know!  He won’t wake up.  Whatever attacked him did some physical damage, some busted ribs and what looks like a pretty severe concussion, but that’s not enough to account for what’s happening to him.  He’s barely hanging in.  It’s really not good.  Banner’s on his way to Manhattan, but I don’t think he’s going to have any answers, either.  I mean, it’s fucking messed up is what it is.  He just won’t regain consciousness.  His vital signs are seriously depressed, like he’s dying or something, but there’s nothing to account for it.  We’ve tried everything to wake him up and nobody has any explanation and–”

Stark was rambling and repeating himself.  He did that when he was seriously upset.  Not panicked, and not overtly terrified, but upset enough that he was putting some effort into keeping his voice level.  And it was as if he couldn’t do that and maintain any sort of filter on his mouth.  That more than anything set Steve’s nerves on edge.  “Tony, easy.  We’re already on our way back.”

“Thank fucking God.”

“How did this happen?  When?”

“Nobody knows.  JARVIS says he was heading out from the Tower yesterday morning.  He was, uh…  I don’t know, Steve.  Jesus, this is fucked up.  JARVIS claims he was following Romanoff.”  Steve felt something inside him fracture.  The certainty.  Sam was glancing at him quickly and repeatedly.  He tried not to notice, tried to keep calm and cool, because he couldn’t let himself _feel_ anything right now.  “JARVIS told me she was slinking off somewhere.  Had a couple of times over the last two weeks.  Barton was suspicious and went after her.  Apparently they ended up at the Hyatt down by Grand Central.  I don’t know why.  I don’t know what happened.  All I know is the FBI was there and they found Clint unconscious in an alley.  They didn’t find Natasha.”

“So, what’s that mean?  She’s gone?” Sam asked.

“No idea.  Nobody knows where she is.  I’ve had JARVIS monitoring everything we can monitor: government security feeds, the FBI and the CIA, foreign intelligence agencies, airports and trains and _everything_ …  There’s no sign of her.”  Tony hesitated again.  “The FBI’s got a warrant out for her.  For treason.”

“Holy shit,” Sam breathed.

That fracture widened, widened into a gap, and it flooded with terror.  With icy worry.  _Oh, God.  She’s in trouble._   _She’s in trouble, and I wasn’t there to protect her.  God._   “This isn’t right.  She wouldn’t just leave Clint if he was hurt,” he heard himself say.

“She did,” Sam reminded softly.  His brows were pinched in fury and dismay.

“Not without a good reason.  She wouldn’t do that.  Clint’s like…”  Like what?  A brother?  A friend?  _Her lover.  “Of all the men I’ve had, Rogers, you are by far the most pathetic.”_   Steve shook the thought away like it was poison because _it was_.  _No._   _She wouldn’t do that to him._ Why the hell was he so sure of that, given all the lies she’d told him?  Why was he so sure she wouldn’t hurt Clint when she’d hurt _him?_   It was silly and stupid and goddamn foolish, but he was.  “I know she wouldn’t leave him like that unless she had no other choice.”

“Like running from the law?” Sam returned.  “Like avoiding arrest?  Cap, she’s one of them.”

“One of what?  You guys know something I don’t know?” Tony demanded.

Steve didn’t want to talk about it.  And even if he did, he didn’t know where to start.  “HYDRA’s moving against us, Tony.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line.  “Well, that’s bad.”

“Obviously SHIELD was only the tip of the iceberg.”

“That’s a pretty fucking big iceberg,” Tony commented.

“We don’t know what or where.  We went to the last known location you supplied for Black Widow in Prague and found a whole nest of HYDRA.  Three guys were talking about some plans against the US and against the Avengers in particular.  One was Aleksander Lukin.  He’s a general in the Russian army, and he’s got ties to the Winter Soldier.  The other two we didn’t know, but one of them was American.”

“And they’ve got Steve’s blood,” Sam blurted out.  It was like he was trying to talk before Steve could stop him.  “They were doing some sort of research on it.”

“You can’t recreate the super soldier serum,” Tony quickly reminded them.  “It’s impossible.”

“This isn’t the first time they’ve tried,” Sam returned.  “They were trying during World War II, and obviously they never stopped.  They were using SHIELD to steal blood samples and–”

“We can talk about it when we get there,” Steve said firmly, shaking his head at Sam.  Sam was frustrated and irritated at being so summarily silenced.  But Steve was adamant, staring at him with a look that was half an order and half a plea to not say anything further.  “Tony, you said something did this to Clint, not someone.  What did that mean?”

“There’s not much to go on.  Whatever it was, it disappeared just like Romanoff did.  A couple of pedestrians got some blurry images of it, though.  I’ve had JARVIS trying to analyze them, pick them apart, but all I’ve been able to figure out is it doesn’t look human.  It’s over eight feet tall, probably five hundred pounds or more.  It’s got… some odd appendages.”

“What does that mean?” Sam said.  He was becoming increasingly agitated.

“One of the pictures didn’t get much of an image of the man’s – _whatever’s_ – face, but it got a pretty good view of its arms.  They were long.  Like, octopus long.”

“You mean like tentacles?”

“Yeah.”  Sam and Steve shared a horrified look.  What the hell were they dealing with?  That American man at the meeting in the tower had mentioned something about HYDRA sending out its monster.  This had to be it.  “I know it sounds crazy, but we fought an alien invasion with giant flying armored whales, so anything’s possible, I guess.  What was that guy’s name?  Lukin?”

“General Aleksander Lukin,” Steve said.  “He’s got ties to HYDRA and the Red Room.  At one point in time, he was the Winter Soldier’s handler.”

“Small world,” Tony grumbled disdainfully.  He sounded distracted, like he was working at a computer.  “I’ll work him up.  Anything else?”

“Everything you can find on Vitalacorp,” Sam responded.  “It was obviously a front for HYDRA’s operations.”

Steve added, “And Stern.  He’s a senator with–”

“Yeah, I know who that is,” Tony said.  “He’s in jail, which is a good place for him.”

“Stern’s got ties to whoever that American guy was at the meeting,” Steve explained.  “Not sure how deep, but hopefully enough that you can trace him down through whatever Stern was up to.”

“Right.  I’m on it.  And I’ll send a jet for you two.  JARVIS says you’re in Munich.”

Sam was visibly relieved.  “Yeah.”

“Alright, lay low.  Give me a few hours.”  Tony sighed.  He suddenly sounded tired.  And worried again.  “And be careful.  Get back here in one piece.  We’re already two Avengers down and we don’t even know what we’re up against.”

“Sure.  Hurry.”

“You got it.”  With that, Tony hung up.

Sam pressed his thumb over the button to end the call and set his phone back down to the console.  “What the hell, Steve?  Any reason why you didn’t want to tell him about Natasha’s involvement in this?  You know we can trust Stark!”

“I do trust him,” Steve insisted.

“Then why keep him in the dark?”  Steve didn’t answer.  Sam shook his head.  “You know what this sounds like to me?” he said angrily.  “A hand-off gone bad.  That guy back there said they needed something from her.  This was an exchange: whatever she had for whatever they were paying her.  Barton walked in on it and they tried to kill him.  The Feds showed up and she bolted.”

Steve looked back out the window.  He couldn’t deny that.  The situation did sound exactly like what Sam described.  But he just couldn’t believe it.  “She wouldn’t do that.  I can’t explain it.  I just know she wouldn’t leave Clint to die.”

“Christ, don’t tell me you trust her.”

“I don’t know.”

“What happened?  I admit I don’t want to believe she’s part of this, that maybe she was playing you and me and all of us all along, but…  The evidence is pretty damning.”  Sam glanced at him again, gripping the steering wheel tighter.  “It’s more damning now than ever, and _now_ you want to give her the benefit of the doubt?”

“Sam–”

“Steve, I don’t want to see you get hurt again.”  Steve closed his eyes.  He couldn’t stop the wince from reaching his face.  Sam’s voice was softer now, as if he was realizing that this wasn’t so clear cut.  That he was maybe leaping to conclusions.  “Look, when we get back to New York, we can all sit down and figure this out togeth–”

“I’m not going back.”

The soft declaration surprised Sam.  Some part of Steve was surprised, too, but not enough to shake his resolve or even reach his face.  Sam’s alarm faded to anger and desperation.  “What do you mean, you’re not going back?  Steve, you can’t – you have to…  No, you gotta come back with me.”

Steve looked down at his hands again, his hands that were a little bruised but strong and calm in his lap.  “I have to find her.  If there’s even a chance she’s in trouble…”  He couldn’t finish.  The thought was too distressing.  The silence that came was heavy, crushing, and Steve breathed through it.  Sam clearly didn’t know what to say.  He was furious but doing his damnedest to not show it.  His jaw was clenched, his hands tighter still on the steering wheel, his breath short and his posture rigid.  Steve tried to explain.  “If she’s HYDRA, I need to stop her.  If she’s not, I need to help her.  Either way, I have to find her.”

Sam couldn’t argue with that logic.  He wanted to.  He was stiff and forbidding a moment more, struggling to accept this.  Then he sagged.  “Jesus, Steve.  I can’t stop you, can I?” 

Steve tightened his jaw.  His raised his head and released a slow, long breath.  “I have to do this, Sam.”  _One way or another, I have to know._

* * *

Tony called back with flight information shortly thereafter.  Neither Sam nor Steve said anything about Steve not returning to the States.  Sam very obviously wanted to; he was practically vibrating with the need to tell Tony, to get Tony on his side to convince Steve that this was really, _really_ stupid.  Maybe it was.  Steve had a history of impulsively following his gut when he felt he had to, when he knew it was right and necessary.  It was what had gotten him into countless fights in his youth.  What had led him to crash the _Valkyrie_.  What had led him to fight the Red Guardian when he’d been hurt and turn himself over to SHIELD to protect Natasha when he’d known the sort of danger into which he was placing himself.  This was no different.  It was stupid and foolhardy and all kinds of dangerous, and he wasn’t going to be talked out of it.

Sam didn’t try.  After Tony’s call, he simply looked resigned.  They killed some time driving around in silence, waiting because it was going to take hours for the Stark Industries jet to arrive.  Tony had apparently bought off one of the independent companies that owned a private hangar at the airport, so they could avoid the attention (and delays) of the main terminal.  They got something to eat, something that was quick and tasteless, and then headed back.  They found their way with the help of the phone’s GPS to the hangar.  They parked down the road a bit where they wouldn’t be seen, under the awning of a few brightly colored trees.  Sam shut the car off and wearily leaned back in the driver’s seat.  Steve was quiet, too.  It was starting to rain again, a fine drizzle that coated the windshield in tiny droplets.  A breeze brushed through the boughs of the trees, a dance of color against the gray of the sky.  Steve watched emptily.

“How are you even going to find her?” Sam finally asked, breaking what seemed like an unbreakable silence.  The tone of his voice suggested he’d been working this through in his head for a while, probably since Steve’s solemn declaration that he wasn’t going back.  Sam sighed before turning and regarding Steve plainly.  “If this happened yesterday morning, she’s got practically a two-day head start on you.  And this is what she does.  She’s a spy.  If she doesn’t want to be found, you’re not gonna find her.”

“I can find her,” Steve responded simply.

Sam looked like he wanted to throttle him.  “How?”

He couldn’t lie.  “I don’t know.  But I will.”

Sam could have argued further.  That wasn’t an answer.  That was more nonsense.  But Sam said nothing, shaking his head in defeat and opening the car door.  He stepped out, and Steve joined him.  They went through their gear in the back of the truck.  Sam opened his pack, transferred most of the weapons out of it except for one of the Glocks.  He also gave Steve the thick folder that was the dossier on the Winter Soldier.  Steve hesitated a moment before taking it.  It felt weightier in his hands now than it had before.  He swallowed through a dry throat and carefully slid it into his own pack.  Then he remembered something.  He dug deeper inside, wondering if it had been lost during all the chaos.  But, no, it was there.  He pulled out the strange shard of that metal they’d taken from Vitalacorp.  It was still wrapped in one of his sweatshirts.  “Take this back to Tony.  Tell him to figure out what it is.  Maybe it’s nothing, but…”

“Not likely.  Yeah.”  Sam took the wrapped item and buried it in his pack.  There wasn’t much else to take or do.  “Here.”  He shoved his phone at Steve.

Steve balked a little.  “Don’t you think you’ll need it?”

“Take it.”

“You know,” he started, lips fighting for a grin, “we fought an entire war without these things and won, so I–”

“Rogers, shut the hell up and take the goddamn phone.  I’m not leaving you out here with no way to call for help.”  Sam wasn’t backing down from this.  Steve realized as well that it wasn’t worth the fight.  He took the StarkPhone from Sam’s palm and swept his thumb over the blank screen before sliding it into his pocket.  “And you will call for help.  And check in.  With me or Stark, I don’t care which, but you will call someone or I swear to God I’ll kick your ass, Captain America or no.  It won’t be pretty.  I know some dirty tricks.”  Sam was trying to joke (not very hard), but Steve could tell he was serious.

Steve chuckled.  “I know you do.”

They stood in an awkward silence.  Then Sam grabbed him by the shirt and hauled him into his embrace.  Steve went willingly, forgetting all the fear and doubt and everything else to hug the other man tightly.  They stayed that way for a moment.  Sam pulled away first, a tad embarrassed and wiping a little at his eyes.  “I’ll be alright,” Steve promised.  Sam didn’t seem capable of agreeing with that, but he did nod.  That was all he could manage, and it wasn’t much.  Steve tried not to let that bother him or dissuade him.  He smiled as well as he could.  “Take care of the others, alright?  Be prepared for anything.  And Clint…  Just do what you can for him.  I’ll come back as soon as I find Natasha.  I promise.”

“Right,” Sam said.  “Be careful.”

“You, too.  See you soon.”

And that was that.  Sam shouldered his pack, lifted the hood of his jacket, and headed down the road toward the hangar.  Steve stood by the car and watched until he couldn’t see him anymore.  Then he got inside.

He sat for quite some time before he could think again.  He was alone now.  Part of him was terrified of that fact.  He was alone, and he didn’t know where he was going, and _God, what the hell am I thinking?_   Sam was right.  This was stupid.  This was _insane_.  That dream hadn’t been real.  To have faith in Natasha like this when everything logical and reasonable was telling him otherwise…  To go _alone_ into what was probably hostile territory, places teeming with HYDRA and ghosts from the past…  To think he could find her.  He couldn’t find her.  And Bucky wasn’t with him.  Bucky wasn’t looking out for him or protecting him or guiding him.  Bucky was the Winter Soldier.  It was a goddamn _dream_ , and _none_ of it was real.

But it felt real.

“ _I’m not gonna leave you alone.  I promised your ma I’d take care of you, so that’s what I’m gonna do.”_

_“She’s not what you fear she is.  She never was.  You’re not seeing the truth.”_

_“If you forgot it, make yourself remember.”_

_“It’s time for you to see the truth.”_

_“Go, Stevie.  Find your way out of this.  Go find her.”_

_Go home to her._

His mind raced and raced.  He had to find his way out of this.  He had to find the truth.

He had to find Natasha.

And he knew her, no matter what she was or what she’d done.  He knew her.  If the FBI had a warrant out on her, she wouldn’t stay in the US.  That was too dangerous.  And whatever was hunting her would surely look for her there, hope that she’d make contact with the Avengers and then attack again.  No, she’d flee, get out of the country, go someplace where she could lay low, wait it out…  Someplace she knew, someplace she’d feel safe.  The certainty came back, hot and powerful, and he grabbed it and held on tight.  It was right.  Maybe it wasn’t proof, but he believed in it like he hadn’t believed in much since he’d left her.  He turned the car back on.  He reached into the back, grabbed another of the Glocks, checked to make sure it was loaded, and set it on the seat beside him.  Then he grabbed Sam’s phone and thumbed a destination into the GPS.  It was a long drive, but if he left now, he could be there in less than two days.  He could do this.  He could find her.  He could.

_I can._

Where would she go if she was being hunted?  Where would she hide?

_Home._

Russia.


	6. Chapter 6

Natasha was alone, and for the first time in her life, it frightened her.  She’d been on her own countless times before, solo missions spent infiltrating this enemy stronghold or carrying out that assassination.  When she’d been an agent of the Red Room under Brushov’s reign, she’d rarely had a partner.  She’d been trained to operate efficiently without aid or support, to go in and seduce and manipulate her mark before taking what she needed and killing him (often, his life was all she needed).  Relationships, even those required by her profession, were to be avoided because they were a liability, a chance for her to be exploited, both by her supposed partner and her enemies.  Trust was impossible in the Red Room.  Joining SHIELD had exposed her to a whole new world where she was often expected to do just that, trust and work closely with other people.  It hadn’t come easily to her in the least, but she had learned that people were not fundamentally cruel or evil and that there was inherent value in friendship besides the opportunity for coercion or manipulation.  She’d been partnered with Hawkeye, partnered with Captain America, deployed often with the STRIKE Team and, of course, the Avengers.  Still, even then she’d occasionally been sent to do extremely difficult tasks on her own if the mission parameters weren’t conducive to working with another agent.  She still got the job done like no one else ever had.

But now…  Now she felt utterly stripped bare.  Naked.  _Exposed._   There was no one with her, no one to give her orders.  No one to guide her.  Had she gotten that accustomed to the comfort and protection of SHIELD and the Avengers and Clint and Steve that she could no longer function without it?  It sure as hell seemed so.  She’d spent the entirety of the flight from JFK to Moscow on edge.  Her stomach was tied in knots, tied hard and painful, and she knew her anxiety was showing.  If anyone was watching her, it would be pathetically obvious with her pale face, worried eyes constantly roving, and downright fidgety appearance.  She couldn’t stop herself.  She was terrified.  Part of her was embarrassed by her panic, but the other part was simply struggling not to succumb to it.  She’d been in situations like this before.  Her mission compromised.  Her lies revealed.  On the run.  Fleeing from men trying to capture or kill her.  She’d gotten through things like this before.

 _You’ve never been in_ anything _like this before._

She pressed her hand down to her belly.  The plane was rattling again with a burst of turbulence during its descent, and it made her already queasy stomach flop anew.  She closed her eyes and licked her lips and tried to find her composure.  God, she needed it.  Now more than ever before, she _needed_ to be Black Widow.  And now more than ever before, she simply couldn’t be.  She was rattled down to her core.

Everything that had happened over the last two days was something of a blur.  As the pilots announced they would be landing in Moscow in fifteen minutes, her mind whirled and went back to the same thoughts she was trying so hard to avoid.  _Clint’s dead.  I left him there.  That thing killed him, and I left him._   The guilt and grief from that was damning enough.  Just as Clint had ordered, she’d fled from that monster, whatever it had been, running as fast and far as she could while he sacrificed himself to allow her escape.  Once she’d put what she’d hoped was sufficient distance between her and the altercation, she’d slipped into an Old Navy clothing store, her body operating on autopilot because her mind had frankly failed her.  She’d bought clothes, not particularly caring what, doing her damnedest not to seem distressed or panicked like her heart wasn’t about to beat out of her chest and tears weren’t burning her eyes.  _Keep calm._   That had been all her mind had managed, and it had come in a chant.  _Keep calm.  Keep calm._   After that, she’d gone to a fast food place and changed in the bathroom.  Her hands had been shaking so badly that she’d fumbled to get her old clothes off.  She’d pulled the price tags off the jeans she’d bought and the sweater, slipping into them and more than a little dismayed to find the pants didn’t quite fit.  That had brought it all back.  _They’re after the baby.  Clint’s dead.  Steve’s gone.  HYDRA’s coming for the baby._   She’d nearly thrown up then and there, nearly collapsed and given into the sobs that had been building in her throat.

But she hadn’t.  She’d zipped the jeans up despite how tight they were, gathered her old clothes, and stuffed them into the bag.  As she’d been doing that, she heard a rattle.  Her fingers had slipped inside the pocket of her discarded pants and found Steve’s dog tags.  She’d been wearing them every day since they’d returned from DC, trying not to think or feel or read too deeply into it (or acknowledge what it meant), simply doing it because it had inexplicably brought her comfort.  She hadn’t been able to make herself put them on that morning, not when she’d been going to Fine to ask him about the possibility of an abortion.  The guilt had been too sharp and sour, so she’d stuffed them into her pocket before leaving the Stark Tower.  As she’d stared at them in her hand in the bathroom stall, trying to breathe through the pain and fear and panic, the only thing she’d been able to think of was Steve and how much she wanted him.  _Needed_ him.  That was where this feeling of being alone, _truly alone_ , had first started to plague her, cruel and insistent and unfixable.  She’d sobbed softly, just that once, and put the dog tags on, stuffing them down into her bra under the heavy sweatshirt before leaving the bathroom.

She’d felt a tad better after that, though everything was a tidal wave building off in the distance and threatening to roll closer.  She’d decided not to think about it, not about leaving Clint to die, not about Steve abandoning her, not about the baby she would now have to protect, not about _anything_ other than what she’d needed to.  And what she’d needed to do was get out of the country.  One step at a time.  _Focus._ She’d been trained to do this, by SHIELD and Brushov, slip under the radar and out of sight.  If the FBI was involved, there was no place safe in the US.  And that… _thing_ hadn’t looked like the sort to give up the hunt.  She’d casually roamed around the restaurant, pulling her phone from her pocket.  She’d hesitated then because who in the world could she call?  Who could she trust?  Briefly she’d considered phoning Stark, but Fine had been HYDRA.  _Fine had been HYDRA._   If he’d been, who else could be?  She’d been too frightened and paranoid to really consider that, the vast breadth and gravity of the situation disturbing.  The only person she completely trusted to not be HYDRA was out of her reach, gone on some foolish quest to save the Winter Soldier.  And she’d called him.  It had been risky and foolish, but Natasha had found a booth and tucked herself into it and called Steve.  Repeatedly.  It had been the same each time: straight to voicemail.  Her worry and desperation had mounted.  “Come on, Steve, answer me,” she’d prayed under her breath, waiting a minute or two between attempts while sweeping careful eyes around her.  “Answer me.  Please…”  _Please.  I need you._

He never answered.

She’d battled more frustrated, helpless tears when she’d given up.  She’d tried Wilson’s phone, but her own StarkPhone kept complaining about some sort of network error, and that had been worrisome enough to make her stop.  SHIELD had been huge and powerful with the capacity to tap into cellular networks across the world.  Was HYDRA watching her?  And how embedded was HYDRA into the US government?  It was horrifying.  She’d sat there for a moment, trying to collect herself, battling nausea and horror and acute anguish.  But she’d found some equanimity, closing her eyes and dragging a ragged but deep breath into her lungs.  And then another.  And another.  Clint had wanted her to run, had died so that she could run, so that was what she was going to do.

_Run._

And she knew where to run.

As a SHIELD agent and a former assassin, she was well-acquainted with how to use the black market to her own ends.  She knew of a few dealers in Manhattan capable of setting her up with a fake passport.  Again, it had been a risk, but she felt this was a reasonable one and there’d obviously been no other choice.  Natasha Romanoff was never going to clear airport security.  She’d gone to one man on the Lower East side with whom she’d worked in the past and paid the lascivious ass in cash for a Russian passport and a plane ticket to Moscow.  Then she’d done up her hair differently, applied far more makeup than she normally wore, and hoped beyond hope that the TSA agents (and everyone else at JFK) would fail to recognize that Elena Pavlova was actually Black Widow.  Somebody somewhere was watching out for her, because they hadn’t.  She’d slipped right through the security checkpoints and onto a 747 bound for Russia.

That had brought her here, aboard this plane that was rapidly descending into Sheremetyevo International Airport.  With some effort she pulled her hand away from her stomach and forced herself to relax.  Once the plane landed, she would need to move fast.  Truth be told, Russia was hardly a safe place for her.  Her face was perhaps not as recognizable, but she had enemies here.  Many of them.  Old associates in the KGB and Russian government.  Brushov’s friends and foes alike.  Previous marks (or the families, comrades, and partners of them).  Evil men and good men.  People she’d used, hurt, exploited, or ruined.  Her time with SHIELD had not improved her image in many of their eyes.  Still, she had allies here, too.  Informants she’d used in the past.  People she knew from the Russian mafia, the Russian underground, criminals and disreputable folk who had no love for government of any sort.  And there was no loss of love between the US and Russian governments themselves.  That had been another reason she’d come here.  If the Justice Department and whoever was pulling its strings tried to extradite her, she highly doubted Moscow would abide by their wishes.  She figured she was safe here, if she was careful.  Her mission was alarmingly simple.  Find a place to lay low and wait this out.

As the plane touched down, the same thoughts came circling back again.  _Wait what out?  Whatever HYDRA’s planning?  The pregnancy?_   What was she thinking of doing, hiding for the next six months until the baby was born?  That was improbable.  And even if she did, what then?  She’d considered other alternatives.  That was all she’d been doing.  If HYDRA wanted this child, she could take it from them.  The prospect of terminating the pregnancy seemed even more coldly logical now, especially given Fine’s ardent fear that she would do it.  He’d been scared enough of the prospect to call in his superiors and bring Natasha into custody, so whatever they wanted the baby for, it was serious and dangerous.  Ending the pregnancy would remove what could only be a weapon from their hands, cross a variable out of this equation.  But she thought of what Clint had said, about losing Steve forever.  That fear (and it was a fear) had significantly tempered her anger or at least transformed it into something not so irrational.  Clint was right, as much as she’d wanted to deny it.  And the same thoughts had been in her own head for weeks before this.  Steve didn’t know about the baby.  He wouldn’t have left her if he had.  This wasn’t his fault.  And she knew like she knew she loved him that he would want their child.  He would fight to protect it, fight to save it.  So ending the pregnancy felt abruptly out of the question, even if it was the safer route.

So she’d considered running even further away, completely abandoning her previous life and adopting a new identity, holing up somewhere remote like a hermit and having the baby by herself in secrecy.  It wouldn’t be easy, living alone and constantly fearing discovery, but she knew she was capable of doing it.  She was capable of doing anything.  But whether or not she wanted to do it was another question, and, again, she didn’t.  She wanted Steve, and Steve would want the baby.  She couldn’t do that – have this child – without him.

That left finding Steve.  Finding him while HYDRA was trying to find her.  Finding him while he was trying to find the Winter Soldier.  _This is so damn screwed up._   If she was honest with herself, that was probably the biggest reason she’d come back to Russia, despite its dangers.  If Steve was still searching for the Winter Soldier, inevitably the trail would lead him to the Soviet bloc, perhaps even to Russia itself.  At least, she prayed it would.  If it did, maybe, just maybe, she could find him somehow.  Maybe…

She didn’t know how.  She didn’t know what she was going to do.  It had been a sadly common theme of late.  All she knew for certain was that she needed to get off the plane, out of the airport, and find her way to a safe place.  There were quite a few of them in Moscow, old houses and apartments and such.  At least, there had been when she’d still been under Brushov’s control.  Returning to any of them was a risk as well, but if she could find one that was abandoned and hopefully well enough stocked and hidden so that it had been spared by looters over the years, she’d have guns.  Supplies.  A place to hide, most of all.  If she couldn’t…  Well…

 _Get off the damn plane._   The harsh thought sliced through her stasis.  The jet had finished taxiing to the terminal, and everyone around her was beginning to gather suitcases and bags.  She did the same, lifting the backpack she’d bought from a department store before leaving New York.  There wasn’t much inside.  Clothes.  Toiletries.  She hadn’t dared trying to sneak a gun aboard the airplane, and there were plenty of other ways to kill a man if she needed to.  She felt the familiar weight of Steve’s dog tags, warm against her chest where they were hidden, and that calmed her.  She was Black Widow, a master spy and master assassin.  This wasn’t something she hadn’t done a thousand times before.  She could do this.

She shouldered her backpack, pulling her pony tail from where it got caught under the strap.  There was a fluidity to her motions now, very much those of a young woman on a journey.  She sunk into the image, letting it embrace her, direct her.  Elena Pavlova.  A Russian native flying home from where she now lived in New York, possibly to see her parents or her family.  Simple.

She waited in line to disembark the plane.  Ahead of her was a family, a woman about her age with two small children who had cried off and on during the flight.  The woman was fumbling with them and her bags, struggling and flustered and seemingly on the verge of tears herself.  Natasha stared at them a moment, entranced and horrified all at once by the sight of the little blond girl clutching onto her mother’s leg and the younger boy wailing in the woman’s arms.  The sight was distressing to say the least, and doubt came out of nowhere like a knife.  With the doubt, came the nausea, and the urge to throw up was almost overwhelming.  The people ahead in the cramped fuselage were taking their sweet time getting their things in order, and the queasiness combined with the screaming was making this unbearable.  Natasha had boundless patience.  She could sight down a rifle for long minute after long minute, waiting until the exact moment presented itself where she could make the kill in one shot.  She could tease and torment a man however long she needed to in order to have him eating out of her palm.  But this…  The fuselage shrank in around her, claustrophobic and suffocating.  _What the hell am I doing?  What the hell am I doing?  What the hell am I thinking?_

Suddenly she didn’t give a damn what Steve wanted.  She couldn’t do this!

The woman shushed the screaming boy.  The blond-haired girl was staring at Natasha, staring with huge brown eyes.  Natasha found herself staring back.  The little girl smiled.  And Natasha was so strangely touched and surprised that she smiled, too.  Suddenly she moved.  “Here, let me help you,” she said in Russian, and before she could think twice, she was reaching for the other woman’s bags.

“Oh, thank you,” the lady gasped.  She blew a sweaty look of brown hair from her face.  “Thank you so much!”  She gave Natasha a truly appreciative smile, adjusting her son to get a better grip on him and holding him closer.  That immediately calmed him, and he sniffled, tucking his face into his mother’s neck.  Natasha looked away from those huge eyes to see the little girl was still watching her intently.  Watching her like she was something remarkable, something amazing.  Something pure and powerful.

The line ahead finally started moving.  “Go on,” Natasha softly instructed the child, and the girl smiled again before following her mother.  Natasha went as well, lifting the heavy bags. 

When they were down the jet bridge and through the gate, the woman turned to her.  She smiled anew, winded and so relieved.  “Thank you again,” she said.  “I can take it now.”

Natasha hesitated, regarding this lone woman and her two young children and knowing all too acutely the dangers of the world.  This was far from her place, and more than that, she herself didn’t have the time or freedom to engage in something so frivolous as helping a complete stranger.  She needed to help herself.  She glanced around the concourse quickly, not making a show of it, because she half expected HYDRA or the government (were those separable and distinct anymore?) to be there waiting to arrest her.  They didn’t seem to be, and that encouraged her to stay.  “I don’t mind,” she said, adjusting her grip on the bag.

“Are you sure?” the woman responded.  She seemed positively uncomfortable with this but at the same time desperate for the aid.

“It’s no problem,” Natasha answered.  She realized that this might actually be a smart move.  If someone was here watching for her, they might not think to look at a young woman helping another woman with her children.  She smiled sweetly.  “Really.”

The woman nodded, too burdened to really think twice or wonder if there was anything more at play here.  “My husband’s outside.  Would you mind helping me to the baggage claim?  If that’s too far out of your–”

The hint of this plan was enough to bring back her composure.  Natasha smiled.  “No, that’s fine.  I need to go there myself.  I’m Elena.”  She extended her hand toward the woman.

The lady hesitated just a little longer, but she smiled and shook Natasha’s hand.  “Valentina.”

“Nice to meet you,” Natasha said.  She shouldered the woman’s bag one bag, Steve dog tags slipping out of her shirt as she leaned over to grab it.  Even though she was surprised, she put them back smoothly.

They walked, moving into the heavy throng of people.  Valentina still carried the little boy so they could quickly and efficiently work their way through the massive airport.  It was crowded with travelers at the many restaurants, seating areas, and concourses.  Natasha felt safer for the sheer number of people surrounding her.  The little girl walked between the two of them, looking up at Natasha at every opportunity she could get.  They made their way through immigration and customs.  Natasha handed them her fake passport without blinking an eye, smiling innocently, and they let her right through.  Then they went onward, through the massive airport toward its front.

Valentina finally noticed that her daughter was constantly watching Natasha and bent slightly to whisper a reprimand in her ear.  “Don’t stare.  It’s not polite.”

“It’s alright,” Natasha dismissed.

“Your hair’s so red,” the little girl said.

Natasha smiled brightly.  “You like it?”

“Yes.  It’s very pretty.  What makes it red?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you a dancer?”

Natasha felt the blood drain from her brain and face and heart and seemingly pool in her toes.  Normally she was in so much better control of her emotions, but that seemingly random question…  Who were these people?  Did they somehow _know_ her?  HYDRA was everywhere.  HYDRA was–

“Maria, please.”  Valentina looked back at Natasha with half an embarrassed smile on her lips.

“She looks like a dancer, Momma.  Like Maya Plisetskaya.”  The child regarded Natasha earnestly.  “I want to be a dancer.  How do you do it?  Can you teach me?  Can you?”

“Maria!”  Valentina shook her head.  “Children these days have no manners.  I intend to instill some in my own,” she proclaimed.  But the little girl still unabashedly stared, and she made no move to correct her again.  Natasha turned her gaze forward, trying not to seem as bothered as she was.  She had never thought she looked anything like Maya Plisetskaya.  “Do you live in Moscow?”

It took Natasha a beat to get her mind back into this.  “I used to.”

“Coming home then.”

“Yes.  Well, visiting home.  From the US.”  Natasha at once hated and appreciated small-talk in these situations.  It made the moment less awkward for certain and she knew she excelled at lying, acting, and putting people at ease.  But it could be a distraction, and she didn’t have her normal poise at hand to help her in concentrating on both maintaining a convincing and off-putting façade while keeping a sharp eye on her surroundings.  “My family lives here.  And my boyfriend lives there.”

“Is he Russian?”

“No, American.”  The lies came easier when they were mixed with the truth.  They always did.

“Military?”  Valentina seemed not entirely pleased with that.

Natasha didn’t have to fake her surprise.  “How do you know that?”

The Russian woman was apparently more perceptive than Natasha realized.  She tipped her head a little toward Natasha’s sweatshirt.  “Those things you’re wearing.  They’re military.  You don’t look like a soldier to me.  Too nice.”  Well, somewhat perceptive.  That was just as well.  And this woman obviously had had some sort of bad experience with servicemen.  She was likely projecting.  “Not a popular thing to be doing.”

Being affronted at that was in character, so she went with it.  “I try not to let other people dictate my life,” she said, not making any effort to hide her unhappiness with Valentina’s comment.  “And he’s nice.  He’s good to me.”

“How long have you been together?”

“I guess it’s been about a year.  He’s in the army.  I don’t see him much.  We met when I was at school over there.  Columbia.  I’m just coming back to try and convince my parents to let me stay there on a work visa.”

“Ah.”

They reached a larger section of the airport.  The crowd thinned as the space grew almost cavernous and airy, sleek metal and glass with sunlight brightly streaming inside in abundance.  Inconspicuously, Natasha checked her surroundings for signs of pursuers, but there weren’t any.  She let herself relax a little.  “What about you?  What brought you to America?”

“Oh.”  Valentina looked hesitant to answer, instead pausing to adjust the baby in her arms.  Surely it must have been exhausting carrying him all this way.  The toddler looked heavy and ungainly.  He was sleepy after his tantrum, and he was putting next to no effort into hanging onto his mother.  Natasha waited for her to be ready, and they continued toward the baggage claim.  “We’re trying to move there.”

Again, it wasn’t difficult to muster up some surprise.  She tempered it out of politeness.  “Really?”

Valentina shrugged.  “It’s been difficult.  And expensive.  And frustrating.”  Natasha could only imagine.  Legally immigrating to the US was supposedly a difficult process.  She’d been fortunate in way.  Working for SHIELD had greased the wheels of bureaucracy, so to speak.  She’d been granted US citizenship almost immediately after she’d proven her loyalty to Fury.  Few others were that lucky to avoid the costs in both time and money.

Valentina clenched the boy tighter, held the little girl’s hand more firmly.  “But we’re doing it.  My husband and I…  There’s nothing for us here.  Nothing for them.”  She shook her head, blowing out a short breath and offering a timid, apologetic smile.  “I really shouldn’t be telling you this.  I don’t even know you.”

“It’s alright,” Natasha said.  The baggage claim was just ahead.

“This is my home.  What I know.  I was a dancer myself, but…  I gave up that bit by bit after she came,” the other woman said, brushing her hand over her daughter’s head.  She sighed, looking resigned though not unhappy.  “I could have worked hard.  Gotten it back.  I know I could have.  You know how it is to live a life, invest yourself fully in something you really want or are really good at…  But I can’t devote myself to it now.  You do what you do for them.”  She smiled fondly at the little girl.  “You have to.  Doesn’t matter if you don’t want it or if it’s hard.  You have to.”

Natasha never had been, was not now, nor ever would be faithful to any particular religion, but right then and there she couldn’t help but wonder if this happenstance meeting wasn’t all just part of God’s not-so-subtle plan to make her listen to exactly what she needed to hear.

They reached the claim.  It was noisy and crowded.  Their jet’s luggage was arriving on its assigned carousel.  Ahead a man was waving, and the little girl broke free of her mother’s grasp to run excitedly to him.  He was blond, tall, smiling, waving emphatically.  The image of Steve doing that came unbidden.  _This is goddamn ridiculous,_ Natasha thought bitterly.  Valentina set the boy down when he squirmed and kicked with renewed fervor, and off he ran toward his father as well with all the grace of a toddler.  The two young women watched for a moment as the man hugged his children, planting kisses on them both before scooping the boy into his arms and clasping the girl to his leg.  Valentina looked so relieved, so happy to have her family together, if not worn and a tad worried.  “Well, thank you.  I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your help.”

“Sure,” Natasha said, handing the other woman her bag.  “Good luck with it all.”

“You too.”

She turned and went to her family.  As they walked away, Natasha watched, lost in this madness.  Then she gathered her wits.  She whispered a curse to herself.  _Get moving.  Get out of here.  Find a cab.  Get to a safe house._

She stepped toward the doors.  Something jabbed into her ribs.  She stopped.  “Don’t turn around,” a low voice purred in her ear.  Natasha’s blood ran cold as she felt what she knew was the muzzle of a gun press harder into her side.  Another arm wrapped around her from behind in an illusion of a friendly embrace.  Every muscle in her body went taut, and her heart ached as it picked up its pace.  _Stupid,_ her mind seethed.  _Stupid stupid stupid–_

The gun didn’t move, but the body behind her shifted to come to her front.  Suddenly she was staring into a face she recognized well.  Too well.  Green eyes.  Lush blond hair.  High cheek bones.  Full lips painted pink.  Stunningly beautiful.  “Yelena,” she hissed lowly.

“Smile, Natalia.” Yelena smiled herself, her lips slipping into an easy grin.  She’d always had that smile, sly and cunning and not at all genuine.  “Smile and act like you’re happy to see an old friend.  You can still lie, can’t you?”

Natasha bit her tongue so hard the tang of blood spilled onto her teeth.  The gun was tight between them, hidden against their bodies as they hugged.  Yelena lowered her head to Natasha’s shoulder in a ginger embrace.  “Now, _walk,_ ” she hissed into Natasha’s ear.

There was no choice.  She could struggle, fight, but she couldn’t be sure in these close quarters that she wouldn’t get shot.  Furthermore, any altercation here would draw attention, and if she ended up arrested or wounded in a hospital…  She started walking toward the exit again.

The sleek sliding doors opened with a swish, letting the brisk autumn air inside.  Natasha gritted her teeth.  The road was wide in front of them, loaded with traffic.  Cars were pressed tightly to the curb, picking up their passengers.  Out here with so much going on, she could run.  She tightened her muscles again, like springs coiling for an attack.  “Don’t,” murmured Yelena, clenching Natasha’s arm tighter and tighter until her nails were gouging her skin.  “Right ahead.  Here they come.”

A black sedan pulled up.  _Run.  Run!_   But she couldn’t.  Yelena’s hand was like iron around her arm, and that gun was vicious in her side.  If she got shot there…  The serum had protected her once, but would it protect her again?  And the baby…  _The baby._  

The front passenger door popped open.  “Get in.”

It went against every bit of self-preservation so strongly pumping in her veins, but she did.  Two more guns were immediately on her, one from the nicely dressed man driving the car who she didn’t recognize, and another behind her.  Yelena slammed her door shut before sliding in behind her.  “Go,” she barked to the driver.

The man holstered his gun and smoothly pulled the car away from the loading zone.  A moment later they were driving through the heavy traffic, away from the airport and toward Moscow.

Natasha kept her heart calm, her breath even, her nerves relaxed.  She slipped into that place inside her.  She would need to now.  No emotions.  No doubts.  Cold calculation.  _Killer._   “You honestly think you can kidnap me,” she said, the nonchalance and cool irritation in her voice surprising her.

“I believe I just did,” Yelena said from behind her.  “It was fairly easy, actually.  Your time with SHIELD has made you weak.”

That reminded her so much of how Brushov had taunted her that she could hardly stand it.  Anger boiled up inside her, anger that never reached her face.  She grinned even though Yelena couldn’t see it.  “You won’t hold me,” she warned, with bravado and haughtiness and _certainty_ she didn’t entirely feel.  “You won’t keep me.”

“You sure about that?”  That hiss in her ear was the only warning she had before a needle poked into her neck.  Wet warmth washed over her, and she lost consciousness.

* * *

“Natasha?”

_…Steve?_

“Nat, can you hear me?”

“Steve…”

Fingers swept into her hair, brushing it back from her face.  Then they trailed down her face, brushing over cheeks, light and tender.  So warm and familiar in a world of cold loneliness and loss.  A thumb traced over her lips.  “Nat…  Look at me.”  She tried, but her eyelids were heavy and seemingly stuck together.  She knew why.  She was dreaming, and he wasn’t there, and if she got her eyes open, she would _see_ that.  He wasn’t there.  “Oh, Nat.  Love, I’m coming for you.  I promise.”  Strong arms encircled her, and he was all she could feel.  Heat and strength and power.  His hands cupped her face, and his mouth pressed to hers gently.  “Hold on.  I’m coming.  I promise.  I’m coming.”

_I’m coming, love.  I promise._

_I’m coming._

Natasha gasped, her eyes snapping open.  _He’s not here._

And he wasn’t.  He wasn’t there, and he hadn’t promised anything.

She awoke to a dark room.  It took her mind a moment to emerge from the soporific effects of whatever they’d injected into her, so she stayed motionless, fighting to quell her nausea and breathing through her nose, eyes squeezed shut against a world that still seemed too bright.  She got control of her reeling senses and fluttering stomach, and she looked again to find the room was some sort of storage place, filled with crates stacked high.  It wasn’t very large, with a cement floor, cement walls, and a tiled ceiling.  A couple of windows were positioned high in the walls, the sort that one might find in a basement.  They let in pale daylight, shafts of it that provided only enough illumination to cast everything in hazy, gray shadows.  She was sitting on a metal chair that was bolted to the floor, the seat cold to her rear, and when she tried to shift her hands, she realized in dismay they were bound behind her back.  She traced the cuffs around her wrists, icy metal to her numb fingertips, and found them thick and tight.  The manacles were connected to the back of the chair as well with chain.  Natasha’s ankles were similarly trussed, and she jerked them once or twice to test the strength of the bindings.  Nothing gave much.  She swallowed through a dry throat.  _Shit._

There was still a significant amount of fog in her head, heavy and sedating, but one thought came crashing through that in fairly short order.  _The baby._   It was utterly irrational, but she looked down her body.  She was still dressed in her jeans and sweatshirt, apparently unharmed.  Realizing that was relieving in a way she hadn’t anticipated, and she closed her eyes against the burn of tears and sighed, tipping her face toward the ceiling.  She hadn’t been hurt.  Yet.  And maybe it was all in her head ( _it_ is _all in my head_ ) but she could have sworn she could _feel_ that the baby was alright.  They were both alright.

When the relief from that faded, and it did so quickly, a thousand desperate questions and thoughts whipped up into a raging storm inside her.  Did Belova know she was pregnant?  Was that why she’d abducted her rather than killed her?  She and Yelena had not parted on the best of terms.  Yelena had been another agent of the Red Room.  Like Natasha, she had been plucked from poverty by Yuri Brushov, this time from the slums of Moscow at the end of the Cold War.  Natasha knew nothing more of her past, save that she had interested Brushov in the same way Natasha had.  They’d both been brought into his Red Room, trained by Brushov to become his assassins and spies, infused with his evil and subjected to tortures and cruelties.  Many of the girls inducted into the secret program had perished during the training and experimental procedures, but Yelena hadn’t.  Together she and Natasha had survived, endured, grown stronger and fitter.  Molded into murderers.  And they had not been friends, as if something so trite and flimsy as friendship could exist in such a horrible world.  Still, their experiences had bonded them in a way, like sisters of a sort, sisters continually and viciously attempting to best each other to demonstrate their worth to a perpetually unsatisfied father.  They had sparred with each other, practiced knife-play and acrobatics and martial arts, learned on each other the best way to strike from the shadows.  They had worked together, trained together, completed their first tentative missions together.  They had been only children in a world of evil, and children played.  For a time, they’d been inseparable, a twisted sort of love between them, and together they’d become the embodiment of everything Brushov had envisioned for his Red Room.

Still, in the end, only one of them had become Black Widow.  Brushov had always had a particular liking for Natasha.  Even when they’d been but girls suffering through the drugs and the brainwashing and the first stages of the horrors they would endure, Brushov had been… kinder to Natasha, if he could be such a thing.  She received his highest praise.  His attention.  The bulk of his time and energy.  She was the specimen he was most interested in exploring, the weapon he most desired to craft, the prize he wished for himself above all others.  She was his beautiful flower, flourishing with poison and potency.  Yelena had not taken well to that.  That mild sense of competition that had begun between them in their youths mounted and mounted as they’d grown, as Natasha was given the more difficult missions, the more high-profile assassinations.  The best opportunities to establish herself as a force with which the world should reckon.  Yelena lagged behind that, bitter and needy.  She had never possessed the natural skill that Natasha did for murder and manipulation.  More than that, however, she had never been as completely in command of her emotions as Natasha had been, and as time went on, her jealousy and anger had begun to dictate her every thought and action.  That had been a weakness with which Brushov could not abide.

It had come to a proverbial head before the general had had the opportunity to eliminate that weakness.  When Yelena had attempted to, for all intents and purposes, steal one of Natasha’s targets from her by eliminating him first, it had led to a fight atop a skyscraper in Istanbul one night that had been brutal.  Two lithe shadows had danced with one another for dominance, for victory.  Knives had sliced through the air, wicked and wild.  Punches and kicks and somersaults.  Beauty and raw power.  But Yelena lacked Natasha’s finesse and, most of all, Natasha’s patience.  She had grown flustered and frustrated as the engagement had worn and encroached upon the time when the target would drive below them, that narrow window in which a sniper’s bullet could meet its mark.  Her impulsivity had permitted Natasha to both best her and rightfully claim the kill.  Having completed the mission, Natasha had dragged Yelena back before Brushov.  This had been the one and only time Brushov had allowed her to decide whether or not to take a life.  He’d held Yelena on her knees by her hair.  _“Kill if it pleases you, Natalia,”_ Brushov had said.  Yelena had watched Natasha with watery eyes, full of hatred and anger.  Full of fear.  _“She dishonored you.  Therefore she is yours to do with as you wish.”_

Perhaps there had never been anything but a shade of something good between them, a twisted companionship, a sisterhood birthed in evil, but Yelena had been the closest thing she’d ever had to a friend.  So she’d let her go.  As Belova had run, Brushov had taken her aside.  _“Black Widow does not know compassion.  Compassion is weakness.  If your enemy is at your mercy, show her you have none.  That is true power.”_ Vicious fingers had curled possessively into her shoulder.  _“The day will come where you regret staying your hand, Natalia.”_

Apparently that day was today.

Natasha hadn’t thought much of Yelena since then.  Brushov had lavished more of his attention and cruelty upon her, using and abusing her with almost ritualistic precision.  She’d been sent to murder Andrei Shostakov the following year, but she’d wondered from time to time if sparing Yelena’s life hadn’t been the first crack in the mask of Black Widow.  The first rent of the fabric of her training, which had unraveled so completely at the silly dream of loving and marrying Alexei and had never been the same since.  After Natasha had been captured by Clint and brought to SHIELD, she’d heard on occasion that Yelena was still out there.  The infrequent murders which she recognized as Belova’s work.  Thefts, particularly of jewels, that the snitches, informants, and moles of the underworld attributed to Black Widow even though Black Widow now worked for SHIELD.  Surely those were Yelena’s doing.  But Natasha had never cared overly much to hunt down her old comrade.  It felt to be an extension of sparing her life and letting her go.  As long as Yelena’s path never crossed her, she was willing to turn a blind-eye.

That had been a mistake.

Natasha groaned, cursing herself for getting herself into this mess.  She’d been in situations like this before, more than she cared to remember honestly.  There was a way out.  There always was.  Yelena was certainly dangerous, probably as dangerous as she was, but she hadn’t killed her.  This probably wasn’t about revenge (or Belova wanted time and privacy to draw out Natasha’s suffering.  The thought was distressing, but Natasha didn’t think that was the case.  Patience wasn’t Yelena’s style).  And Yelena had known where and when to find her.  That all seemed more directed and objective than a quest for blood.  _It doesn’t matter why,_ she reminded herself.  _You need to get out._   She tested her bonds again, but aside from rubbing her wrists raw, it accomplished nothing.  Her feet weren’t secured as tightly as she first thought, but she still couldn’t move them much.  She drew a deep breath to settle her stomach and calm her rattled nerves, looking around more carefully.  Freeing herself from the chair, as difficult as that seemed, was only the first step.  She’d need a way out of the room.  There was solitary door on the other side.  It had no handle.  The windows in the walls were too high to easily access and too narrow to use for escape.  The chair to which she was secured was bolted to the floor.  She’d been wrong about what this place was.  It was actually some sort of interrogation room that had been turned into a storage facility of sorts.  She couldn’t see an easy way out because there wasn’t one.

And even if she could escape her bonds and escape the room, she was probably outnumbered, and she had no idea where she was.  She could have been unconscious for hours (perhaps longer, although she didn’t believe so) so they could have moved her anywhere.  _Don’t get ahead of yourself.  Get out of the damn chair first._   She tried jostling the cuffs again.  And again.  Blood, warm and slick, trickled down into her fingers.  She rocked the chair, and the legs rattled but didn’t give much.  The bolts holding it into the floor were thick.  Still, she worked at it all until she was tired and frustrated.  Then a thought occurred to her.  What had Fine said?  _“Maternal blood and fetal blood don’t mix, but somehow the serum’s getting into yours.”_   Natasha drew a deeper breath.  _“Obviously some of Captain Rogers’ powers, for lack of a better term, have already manifested themselves in your body.”_

“Some of Steve’s powers,” she whispered.

_“More accurately, the super soldier serum in the baby’s blood saved your life.”_

She breathed deeply again.  Gritted her teeth.  Balled her hands into fists.  And pulled hard.

The cuffs _stretched._

The door opened.  Natasha immediately stilled and looked up.  Yelena strolled inside.  She had changed from the casual attire she’d worn at the airport and was now sporting something more appropriate.  Black leather pants and a leather top clung tightly to her curvy body.  It was cut at the midriff, exposing her toned abdomen.  Her abundant blond hair curled around her shoulders, and her eyes glittered with that same feral desire to prove herself as something _better_ that they’d always used to have.  “Natalia,” she said in greeting.  She practically sashayed closer, swaying her hips, _flaunting_.  “I have to say I didn’t ever anticipate this day would come.”

Natasha said nothing, lifting her chin.  She wouldn’t let Yelena under her skin.  Clearly she’d come to taunt her.  Natasha was far too proud and strong to allow her the pleasure.  “But, then, I suppose the events of the last few months were rather unpredictable.  Yuri coming back for you.”  There was something very dark in the way she said that.  And very jealous.  “The lies you were so blindly living all coming down around you.  And now you’re there and I’m here.  Things certainly work out strangely.  SHIELD collapses, and it flushes you out into the open.”

She smiled again and continued her approach.  Natasha saw she had a gun on her hip and a knife in a sheath around her thigh.  “Not only did it flush you in the open, but…  I have to say, Natalia, that capturing you was far easier than I thought it would be.  You were foolish.  Sloppy.  Your first mistake was coming here.  That was simple enough to predict.  With the American FBI hunting you across the United States, I knew you would attempt to go where you have the advantage of old contacts, old supplies.”  Her smile grew fuller, more arrogant.  “The power of an old legacy.  Then it was a matter of finding out which of the many fences in New York provided you with a false passport and plane ticket.  When you’ve been away from the game as long as you have, alliances, if they can even be called that, turn toward the new.  Toward me.”

Yelena pulled another metal chair from alongside one of the towers of crates.  She dragged it over to Natasha, placing it with its back toward her.  She sat on it backwards, legs spread around it.  She tipped her head.  “Then all I had to do was wait.”  Natasha fumed silently.  Part of what Yelena was saying was right.  It had all been stupid and sloppy and maybe if she hadn’t been so far removed from this life of theirs, she would have done a better job covering her tracks.  But she’d been desperate to find Steve and grief-stricken over what had happened to Clint and frightened for herself.  _Weakness._   Since falling in love with Steve, that was all she had been.  Weak.  And careless.

“Now you’re here,” Yelena said again, like she was still trying to convince herself she’d succeeded in doing something she’d never done before throughout years of impromptu and unofficial (and sometimes official) contests and competitions.  She’d beaten Natasha.  “Completely at my mercy.”

“What do you want?” Natasha finally asked, keeping her voice level despite the roiling emotions in her heart.

Yelena’s lips quirked.  “Surely it’s crossed your mind that I could kill you.”  That tiny grin faded.  “And surely it’s crossed your mind that you deserve it.”

Natasha didn’t even glance at the gun on the other woman’s hip.  And she said nothing.  It was an empty threat, and they both knew it.  Yelena donned another condescending smile.  “That famous mask,” she said, her tone positively dripping in amusement.  “So calm.  So controlled.  Behind those eyes, though, you feel, don’t you.  You felt everything you ever did.  Everything you wanted and needed.  You felt the same things I felt.  You merely hid it better.”

“What do you want?” Natasha asked again, more slowly, annunciating every syllable.

Yelena smiled.  “Saying it like that’s not going to motivate me to tell you, you know.”

“Who are you selling me to?”  Yelena’s eyes darkened, and that was all it took for Natasha to know she was right.  Yelena’s tells had always been far too obvious.  Now it was Natasha’s turn to give an arrogant grin.  “How much are they paying you?”

All of Yelena’s swagger disappeared.  She was up and out of the chair in a flash, kicking it aside and wrapping her hand around Natasha’s throat.  She squeezed hard, choking.  “Believe me, Natalia,” she hissed in Natasha’s face as she sputtered for air, “they could pay me nothing at all and I’d still do this.”  Those fingers tightened, and blackness danced on the edges of her vision.  Panicked thoughts about the baby came unbidden.  _Breathe.  You need to breathe for the baby._ “You bitch.  You left like the traitor you were, and even _that_ didn’t make him turn to me.  He wanted _you_ back.  All the trouble he went through to get you back.  And you killed him.”

Natasha struggled to get enough air into her lungs to answer.  “He was a monster.”

“Really, Natalia.  So am I.  And so are you.”  Yelena stood and decked her roughly.  Natasha’s face ripped to the side, blood bitter on her tongue when her teeth cut the soft flesh of her inner cheek.  Yelena hit her again, harder, and Natasha swallowed down a growl and forced herself to be limp.  Yelena wouldn’t kill her.  This wasn’t revenge, no matter how furious Yelena might have been over Brushov’s murder.  This was about money.  Natasha was too valuable a commodity, and someone wanted to buy her.  This was a chance to learn who.  She needed to know.  Yelena looked down on her in fury.  “Always worth so much.  The only thing he ever cared about.  No matter what I did, how good I was, I was never good enough.  You were so fucking special.”

“And you were always so jealous,” Natasha spat.

That earned her another slap, hard enough that her whole body lurched to the left.  The room spun a moment, and when it settled, she found Yelena crouched before her.  “Somebody wants you bad.  The price on your head…  I’d never have to steal another thing in my life.  Never have to take another job.  They’ll–”  Belova cut herself off.  She was staring at Natasha’s chest.  It took Natasha’s beleaguered mind a moment to realize why.  Yelena’s fingers reached toward her neck, pulling the top of her sweatshirt away from her collarbones and reaching for the silver chain underneath.  She slid her hand down Natasha’s shirt, searching and invading, until she grabbed Steve’s dog tags and pulled them free.  Her brow furrowed in confusion, green eyes narrowed, as she stood, lifting the metal cards into the paltry light.

Natasha couldn’t breathe again.  Yelena read them, and when she finished, she looked down on her captive.  Her eyes, always so literally green with envy, were now alight with something else.  Surprise.  And then cruelty.  “So it’s true.”  Natasha stiffened before she could stop herself.  “All of the rumors.  You’re Captain America’s…  That must be why he wants you.  A way to take down the mighty First Avenger himself.”  She gave a little laugh.  “Not that you succeeded the first time.”

Natasha stiffened again.  She struggled hard to keep her face impassive, like the hungry glint in Yelena’s eyes didn’t frighten her.  Like she didn’t feel naked and exposed right now.  She couldn’t reveal anything further.  Not that she was pregnant with Steve’s baby.   Obviously Yelena _didn’t_ know.  And she couldn’t let her find out.  She couldn’t.  “Who wants me?”

But Yelena was lost in her own glee.  She laughed.  Natasha had perhaps been the more ruthless of the two of them, but Yelena had always been more sadistic.  “Oh, Natalia.  What did Yuri always tell us?  What did he stress above all else?”  She smiled that belittling smile again.  Natasha wanted to destroy her.  “Sex is not love.  Never love your mark.”

“Fuck you,” she hissed, and God if that wasn’t telling but she couldn’t hold in her anger.

“No, you fucked him.  A lot, it seems.  Was he good?  Was he worth all of this?”

Natasha didn’t answer.  Minute tremors wracked over her, and she clenched all of her muscles down hard to keep it from escalating into a full-out shiver.  She ground her teeth together, balled her hands into fists hand enough to gouge half-moons of red into her palms.  She was losing it now.  Weeks of hell, of anger and grief and so much _hurt_ , was coming right to the surface in a way that frightened her.

Yelena didn’t notice.  She yanked up on the dog chains hard, choking Natasha and pulling on her hair until they came loose.  “Maybe I’ll find out for myself,” Yelena mused.  She looked down on her captive, that glee dancing in her eyes again.  “He won’t want you anymore anyway.  You know why?”  Natasha couldn’t breathe again.  Yelena’s eyes glowed in anticipation.  “I’ve been busy.  It’s funny how confused a man might get when another woman bearing his lover’s name is running around the world, lying a little here, crushing his faith a little there.  That’s what I’ve been doing.  Working for HYDRA.  For SHIELD where I could.  Slowly taking your place.”  _No._   “I didn’t even know how well this would all work out.  Because he’s been out there, discovering all these little clues, little things I’ve left behind.  Imagine how he might be feeling, finding out you’ve sold him to his enemies, one piece at a time.”  _No!_   Yelena cocked her head, reveling in Natasha’s pain.  It was too apparent now.  She couldn’t hold it back.  “Imagine how that hurts.  Those types of lies.  That sort of… _intimate_ betrayal.  Finding out you were _exactly_ what he always feared you were.”

 _“No!”_ Natasha cried.

Yelena smiled like a glutton brought before the feast.  “Ah, so there goes the mask.  Finally, after all these years, I found a way to _beat_ you.”  She sauntered closer again and grabbed Natasha’s chin, making her look upward.  “Does it hurt, Natalia?  Did you tell him you loved him?  Did you actually mean it this time?”  Yelena leaned closer, dropping her voice to a low murmur.  “I hope you do love him.  And I hope it fucking _kills_ you.”  The heat glaring down on her was crushing and repulsive.  “You can stay here.  Lukin can come collect his prize.  I can get my money.  And then I’ll become Black Widow.”  Natasha tried to pull away, but her nails scraped her jaw and dug into deeper.  Yelena clucked in sympathy.  “Oh, you don’t need to worry, sister.  I’ll go find him for you.  I’ll take care of him for us.”  Those full lips slid into another lascivious, predatory grin.

Natasha’s mind was devoid of thought, burning like it had burned when Brushov’s serum had been upon her, and the urge to _hurt_ was almost unrestrainable.  The world blurred red and black as Yelena turned to leave her.  She paused a step into it and slid Steve’s dog tags over her own neck and down between her breasts.  She kept smiling and smiling.  _Gloating._ “Do you think he’ll be able to tell the difference between us?”

That was it.  Natasha yanked hard.

The handcuffs snapped.

She jerked forward and up.  Now she was the one who grabbed Yelena by the long, pale column of her neck.  She snatched the knife from the other woman’s thigh sheath and pressed its razor edge to the soft flesh beneath her chin.  “Let me go,” she hissed lowly.  _“Now.”_

Yelena was alarmed, shocked.  She chortled, but it was forced.  “You won’t kill me,” she claimed.

Natasha sliced along her neck lightly and squeezed tighter.  She could practically _feel_ the serum thrumming in her veins.  “You sure about that?”

Yelena stared at her a moment, judging perhaps, definitely attempting to seem nonplussed.  Natasha could see the fear in her eyes, though, the same fear that had been there when Brushov had held her down to face retribution all those years ago.  And the same hatred.  Yelena eventually reached into the pouch along her belt and produced the key to the cuffs around Natasha’s ankles.  Natasha released her neck and swiftly pulled the gun away as well.  “Unlock them.”  A glint of pure, frustrated fury shone in emerald eyes, but Yelena followed her orders.  She dropped to a crouch and unsecured the restraints.

The second she was free, Natasha pushed Yelena back.  She pointed the gun at her, glancing between her and the opened cuffs.  Working her ankles free, she finally stood.  Her limbs tingled and ached at being held in the same position for so long, but she ignored it, taking a few steps forward.  The gun didn’t waver.  “Where do you think you can run, Natalia?” Yelena asked after a moment.  “Do you even know how high the bounty is that HYDRA put on your head?  If I found you, everyone else will.”

“No one will find me,” Natasha seethed.

Yelena sneered.  “Coward.  You were great once.  Now that’s all you are.  A coward who runs away.  You ran from Yuri.  You ran from who we are.”  She shook her head.  “You’re not running this time.  Fight me.  Right now.  Winner takes all.”

In days past, she might have.  She might have tossed the gun.  She might have engaged Yelena on principle if nothing else.  Taught her a lesson.  Knocked her down so she wouldn’t be able to get back up.  Asserted her dominance.  But she couldn’t.  She turned herself subconsciously, hiding her abdomen from Yelena’s piercing gaze.  “No.”

“Coward!” Yelena spat again, and she pulled another knife from behind her and charged.

Natasha pulled the trigger on the gun, but Yelena was too fast.  She came at her low, the silver arc of the blade slashing toward her.  Natasha sidestepped, trying to aim again, but she had to duck to avoid another stab of the knife.  A roundhouse kick hit her wrist, and the gun went flying into the shadows.  “Come on, Natalia.”  Yelena traded the knife from one hand to another.  She tipped her head toward the blade Natasha held in her own hand.  “We’ve danced this dance before.  Let’s do it again.  For old time’s sake, yes?  And it’s my turn to lead.”

 _No._   But there was no choice.  Yelena came at her in a flurry of attacks, quick and wicked, and Natasha scrambled to defend herself.  They moved like lightning, a rapid, expertly-executed series of slashes, feints, and counters.  Natasha sank into that calm place in her heart again, the place where _nothing_ could hurt her, where she was faster and stronger than anyone.  She side-stepped Yelena’s jab, rolling into the other woman’s forward motion and throwing her into the crates.  Yelena tried to sweep her legs out from under her, but Natasha lithely jumped away.  Yelena sprung back onto her feet with her hands only to be met with Natasha fist.  She swiped with the knife, the blade whistling through the air.  Yelena was already too far away, darting to Natasha’s left.  Sweat made Natasha’s hair stick to her face as she whirled, but she was kicked in the back and thrown into the crates.

She hit hard, trying to rotate and curl into herself a little to protect her belly.  The second of terror was costly.  Yelena was on her almost instantly, grabbing Natasha’s hair by the mussed pony tail and shoving her face first into crates.  The impact dazed her, and her knife dropped from numb, pained fingers.  She regained her senses enough to push back against Belova pinning her, her heart pounding wildly.  Yelena punched her, her head snapping back into the wood behind her and knocking things down from above with a clatter.  Natasha tasted blood, unfocussed once more and pained enough that Yelena spun her and hit her again.  She brought her arms up in defense, automatically lowering one to guard the baby, but that left an opening and Belova took it.  Natasha held back a cry as she felt the knife bite into her shoulder.  Yelena pushed her, the blade red as she pulled it away.  She crushed her captive up against the crates again, and the knife careened down toward Natasha’s neck.  Natasha caught Yelena’s wrist in time, pushing back with all her strength.  “Who’s helpless now?” Yelena snarled into Natasha’s ear.  Natasha squirmed, desperately seeking an opening, panic trumping her control.  Yelena drove her down harder and harder, crushing her as Natasha vainly brought her right knee up between them to try and push back.  “Who’s _better_ now?  Huh?  Want to beg me to spare you?”

Fury drove her.  Natasha cried out, slamming her leg back down.  She landed her sneaker into Yelena’s knee with a satisfying crunch, and the other woman howled.  Natasha pushed, shoving Yelena down.  Belova’s balance failed her, and she staggered and fell, holding her damaged leg.  Natasha rolled to the right and found her lost knife.

They backed away from each other.  Both of them were bleeding and winded and covered in glistening perspiration.  Yelena limped, testing her knee a moment before putting her weight on it despite the injury.  She flipped her knife around and gestured to Natasha with it.  “Come on, Natalia.  Come on.”

Natasha gritted her teeth and lightly twisted her own blade.  She moved to the right, circling Yelena.  Yelena’s eyes never left hers, following her every move with a move of her own.  “No.  You come to me.  You want to be Black Widow?”  She shook her head.  “Then try, little spider.”

Yelena yowled her frustration, charging as her control snapped.  They exchanged blows again, progressively wilder as Belova’s patience wore.  It all came back quickly.  The countless times they’d sparred in the past.  The countless times Natasha had won.  _Wait._ That was all she needed to do.  Be defensive.  Toy with her.  Get under her skin.  And wait.

She waited until Yelena was the one who got sloppy.

She was coming at Natasha, again and again, crazed and violent and _desperate_ to hurt her.  All it took was a single lunge that had too much power and too much frustration behind it.  Natasha evaded easily, grabbed her, and used her own momentum throw her into the crates.  She put all of her strength into it, strength made so much more potent because of the serum in her blood, and Yelena wasn’t at all prepared for it.  More boxes crashed to the floor with a bang and rattle, breaking and shattering.  Yelena tried to regain her balance in the mess, tried to turn, but Natasha was already in the shadows, rapidly searching for the gun.  She didn’t find it, but her hand curled around something else.  It was the cool metal of a crowbar that had fallen from atop the crates.  She rounded Yelena and hit her hard in the arm, sending her knife skittering across the room.  Natasha kicked her across the face, dropping her again.

Yelena scrambled to her knees, panting heavily now, strands of blond hair sticking to her cheeks and brow.  She was disarmed, and Natasha was looming over her.  She glared viciously, furious.  “Are you going to do it this time?” she taunted.  “Are you finally going to finish me?”

Natasha stared down at her, remembering anew that night so many years ago where she’d been in this same position.  And remembering Brushov, on his knees before her just as Belova was now.  Clint’s words and Steve’s words and everything she wanted to be cooled the rage in her heart.  As strange as it was, she never even considered it.

Instead, she grabbed Yelena’s hair and pulled it back before planting the knife to her throat.  “You are not me.  You will _never be_ me.”  Yelena’s eyes widened.  She was afraid.  She didn’t know what Natasha knew, that Black Widow wasn’t who she had been.  Black Widow was _never going back_.  Natasha let go of Yelena’s hair, reached around to her front, and grabbed Steve’s dog tags.  “You will not hunt me.”  She yanked them off Yelena roughly.  “You are not taking the man I love.”  Natasha’s eyes narrowed.  To hell with being afraid of the truth.  She wasn’t going to be anymore.  “And you are not threatening my baby.”

Yelena turned, shocked.  Natasha didn’t give her a chance to speak.  “If you try, I _will_ kill you.”  Her soft voice was dripping in venom, in the promise of violence, of retaliation, should this warning be ignored.  “Do you understand me, little spider?”  Yelena’s mouth hung open limply.  She nodded weakly, clearly frightened and alarmed beyond the capacity for words.  “Good.”  Natasha hit her as hard as she could across the head with the crowbar.  Belova crumpled to the floor, completely unconscious.

It was silent save for Natasha’s heavy breathing.  She stood still, looking down on Belova, shocked herself at what had just happened.  The crowbar clanked to the floor.  After a moment, she tried to will her pounding heart to calm.  She tried to think.  She took stock of herself, brushing her trembling hand over her belly.  _It’s safe._ She swallowed through a dry throat, closing her eyes and basking in the warmth of that for a moment.  _It’s safe._ How dangerous that had been.  If she’d slipped, made a mistake…  _Thank God.  It’s safe.  The baby’s safe._   Natasha sucked in a shaking breath, panic rushing over her anew.  She glanced at the wound on her shoulder.  It wasn’t deep.  She could deal with it later.  There wasn’t time now.  She had to go.  _Run.  Get out of here._

She finally found the gun.  She checked it, satisfied that it was fully loaded, and put it in the front pouch of her sweater.  She stripped Yelena of her sheath for the knife and wrapped it around her own thigh.  She slid the blade back into it.  If anyone attacked her again…  Came after her again…  The promise pulsed in her brain.  In her heart.  In her soul.  _I’ll kill them._ Then she pressed her lips to Steve’s dog tags and slipped them back over head, relieved so much at their comforting weight on her chest.  Nobody was taking her or this child.  Not Belova.  Not the Red Room or Lukin.  Not HYDRA.  _Nobody._

She knew what she had to do.  Fight her way through whatever thugs Belova had outside.  Free herself.  Escape.  Where could she go?  Somewhere safe.  Somewhere no one would look for her.    The wide Russian countryside.  Freedom and peace.  Alexei.  His father.  The little girl’s voice.  _“Are you a dancer?”_

She knew where to go.

_Run._

She ran.


	7. Chapter 7

The flight back to New York seemed to take forever.  Sam considered himself a pretty patient guy, but by the time the private jet set down at LaGuardia, he was antsy, jittery, and damn desperate to be free of it.  Not that it had been much of a hardship to fly via Stark.  This was by far and away the nicest plane he’d ever been aboard, complete with expensive leather seats, polished mahogany tables, a full bar, and his own personal stewardess.  But he hadn’t been able to enjoy any of it, his mind a whirlwind of worries and fears, not the least of which the fact he’d left Steve behind in what was essentially enemy territory.  Maybe Steve had seemed more like himself than he had in days when they’d parted, but Sam knew there was damage there.  He knew Steve wasn’t thinking clearly and hadn’t been for a while.  And he didn’t exactly trust Steve to take care of himself.  That was pretty fucking sad.  Not trusting Captain America to take care of himself, but that was where this messed up road had taken them.  And then there was the matter of Natasha.  It hadn’t escaped his attention that _before_ the evidence had mounted up against her, Steve had seemed more willing to condemn her, as illogical as that was, and less ready to do it now.  Something had changed his mind, and Sam feared it wasn’t grounded in reality.  If she really was a traitor and he was going after her, thinking, _hoping_ , that she really loved him…  She’d destroy him.

God, he should never have left.

And what the hell was he going to tell the others?  This was Steve’s place, not his.  Steve had basically asked him to go back and help lead the team in not so many words.  Protect them.  Help them.  Who was he to do that?  Nobody.  Just an ex-soldier who’d wanted nothing more than the quiet life, away from the nightmares of war, and who’d somehow gotten tangled up in all of this.  He wasn’t even Falcon anymore, with his wings clipped and his suit trashed during the battle over the Potomac.  Who was he to tell _the Avengers_ what to do?

So it was quite a reprieve to get off of Stark’s flying luxury suite, at least from his thoughts.  He shouldered his backpack as he stepped down the steps to the tarmac at Stark’s private hangar.  There was a man waiting there for him, round in the face with closely cropped hair and sunglasses on despite the evening hour.  He was big in the chest, a bit barrel-like, and had the appearance of hired security.  “Mr. Wilson?” he greeted as Sam came closer.  He spoke loudly over the dissipating whine of the jet engines behind them.  “I’m Happy Hogan, Mr. Stark’s security advisor.  He sent me to bring you back to Stark Tower.”

Sam shook his hand.  He’d heard of Hogan once or twice, usually in connection with Pepper Potts, Tony’s girlfriend and the head of his company.  “Thanks.”

“Where’s Captain Rogers?” Happy asked, his brow furrowing in confusion.

“He decided not to come back.”

Happy seemed surprised, but he thankfully didn’t ask why.  “Alright.  Hop in.”

Sam climbed into the car.  Like the plane, it was ridiculously expensive.  A black Maserati, with a black leather interior and every feature one could possibly want (or even imagine).  Happy settled into the driver’s seat beside him, and a moment later they were zooming toward Manhattan.  Hogan drove faster than Sam would have, weaving fairly quickly through traffic.  It was late enough that rush hour was ending, so the tunnel and streets weren’t as crowded as they could have been.  They drove in silence.  Happy wasn’t unfriendly, but he seemed to sense Sam didn’t particularly want to talk.  Sam was fairly exhausted, jet-lagged and still recovering from the hell of the couple of days ( _weeks_ ) prior, so he was glad for the quiet.  He watched the city blur by his window, people and taxis and cars, and breathed a sigh of relief to be back in the States.

Stark Tower, with its massive Avengers logo adorning the top floors, appeared before them.  Sam gazed up at it, at once excited and nervous.  Happy pulled into the garage beneath the building and found a parking spot amidst Stark’s innumerable sports cars.  He put the car into park and shut it off.  Sam climbed out and put his backpack on again.  “Want me to carry that for you?” Hogan asked.  “You look beat.”

“No, it’s alright.  Thanks, though.”

Happy nodded.  Together they walked through the massive area, their footsteps echoing in the vacuous place, until they reached the elevator.  There was already one waiting for them, and the doors swished open.  “Welcome back, Mr. Wilson,” JARVIS intoned.

Sam didn’t think he’d ever get used to being addressed by a computer.  “Good to be back, JARVIS.”

“Shall I take you to the others?  Or perhaps you would care to freshen up a bit first?  Mr. Stark has allotted you a suite.”

As much as a long, hot shower and collapsing into a huge, soft bed sounded wonderful (and it _really_ did after all the abuse he’d taken lately), things were too pressing to afford a selfish moment.  “Just take me to the others,” Sam ordered.

“Immediately, sir.”  The elevator began its rapid ascent.

As the floors whizzed by, Sam turned to Happy.  The man stood still, having finally removed his sunglasses to reveal small eyes, amiable but sharp.  Sam cleared his throat.  “You’re normally out in Malibu, right?  Tony call you out here?”

“I came back with him when he got word that Agent Barton was hurt,” Happy explained.  He shifted his weight, glancing at Sam.  “Mr. Stark’s concerned that whatever did… _that_ to him might want to come back to finish the job.  I thought I probably keep close, stay on alert.”  That was pretty laughable.  With all due respect to Hogan, this thing that had attacked Barton had dropped a highly-trained SHIELD assassin like he was nothing.  Those blurry images of the monster, towering with those weird tentacles coming from its arms…  He didn’t know what Hogan could do against that.  Hell, he didn’t know what _he_ could do.  This seemed like the sort of thing that required the Avengers, and only one of them was available and well enough to fight.

The elevator stopped at the 18th floor, and the doors swished open.  “There is a medical facility at the end of the hall.  I will open the doors for you,” JARVIS announced.

Sam stepped out.  Happy didn’t follow.  “I’ve got some work to do.  Mr. Stark’s got me trying to hunt down some security abnormalities in the Tower’s communications network.  Nothing major, but it needs to get done.  You okay from here?”

Somehow that felt a little dismaying.  Sam had never interacted with the Avengers without Steve at his side.  Steve had been his anchor here, his reason for being involved with these extraordinary people.  Going in there alone was daunting.  But he only nodded.  He was a warrior in his own right, wasn’t he?  Hadn’t he proved his mettle?  “Sure,” he said.  “Thanks for the ride.”

“Anytime, Mr. Wilson,” Happy said.

“Call me Sam.”

Happy laughed.  “Sure.  See you.”  The doors closed, and Happy was gone.  Sam drew a deep breath to gather himself and hopefully inject some energy into his limbs and stability to his thoughts.  He headed down the spacious corridor to the glass doors at the end.  True to his word, JARVIS let him inside.

He hadn’t known what he’d expected, but it hadn’t been this.  A medical facility, as JARVIS had termed it, wasn’t really an adequate description.  It was a state of the art emergency room connected to an equally state of the art lab.  Everything looked new, never used and recently installed.  Glass walls separated rooms, each filled with equipment, a hospital bed, and sleek monitors.  There were six of those down a short corridor, three on either side of it.  The lab was to his right, teeming with computer terminals, desks, and machines Sam couldn’t identify.  In the center of the room was a massive 3D holographic display, which was loaded with images of the attack.  Sam stared at them a moment, the grainy pictures caught by witnesses of the monster atop the Hyatt hotel, in the street, in the alley.  The workstation was idle for the moment, left in the middle of chewing through data.  Sam stood awkwardly in the silence.  “Hello?”

Stark came to the door of one of the hospital rooms.  The glass walls of this one had its shades drawn, so what lay inside wasn’t visible.  “Wilson.  Hey.  Over here.”  Stark’s expression crumpled in dismay.  “Wait.  Where’s Rogers?  Don’t tell me he…”

Sam stepped across the shining tiled floor, his shoes squeaking a little as he did.  He winced, despite his desire to not seem bothered.  “He stayed.”

A look of what Sam could only describe as betrayal flashed across Stark’s face.  Despite fighting alongside each other, he didn’t know Stark well at all.  He was what the media painted him to be: arrogant, brash, rude, disgustingly rich, and one of the smartest men on the planet.  Still, he was more than that, too.  Loyal.  Stubborn.  Powerful.  Steve had been right to involve him in the fiasco with SHIELD, because without Tony’s protection and aid, they surely would have lost the fight with HYDRA.  Stark gave without much thought, opening his home and his heart.  Maybe that was because he simply had so _much_ (money and time and material possessions) that giving really meant nothing.  Overabundance simply decreased the inherent value of things to him.  Sam suspected that was a part of it, but that wasn’t the whole story.  Tony seemed to be a good man and very much the benefactor of the Avengers, and he did that not just for control or the accolades.  He did it because it was the right thing to do, the best he could do.

Still, Tony was pissed, and he wasn’t making any effort to hide it.  “Things are going to hell here and he’s still out there trying to find that murdering asshole?”  The pain in Tony’s voice was cutting.  So was the disappointment.  Sam had nearly forgotten that, in all of the effort Tony had put forth in digesting all of SHIELD’s secrets dumped onto the internet, he had discovered the Winter Soldier had been responsible for killing Howard and Maria Stark nearly thirty years ago.  The car accident that had taken his parents hadn’t been an accident at all.  Stark had made an effort to seem supportive of Steve’s efforts to find Barnes and bring him back, but the hushed argument they’d had right before he and Steve had left for DC still echoed with all of the unresolved pain on both sides of the debate.  Honestly, it was just one more murder on an unimaginable pile of atrocities.  _God, this is a screwed up situation._   “Did he miss some part about Barton being in a coma?”

Sam felt the need to defend Steve.  “He’s trying to find Romanoff.”

That tempered Tony’s anger a little.  A little.  Sam walked closer, reaching Stark where he stood at the doorframe of the hospital room.  He looked inside and his stomach twisted into knots at what he saw.  “Aw, Jesus,” he whispered.  Clint lay in the bed, hooked up to a dozen different machines.  He was so pale, his face white around the bruises that painted his jaw and temple.  The stubble coating his jaw seemed particularly stark against his pallor, as well as the deep purple circling his tightly closed eyes.  Barely scabbed scrapes and cuts littered his skin, the sort of burns and ruts made from being dragged across something harsh.  Underneath the hospital gown, Sam could see bandages around his ribs.  Bandages around his arm.  Bandages on the side of his head and dried blood.  He looked dead, and had it not been for the monitor slowly beeping in time with his depressed pulse and the miserable vitals drooping across the screens, Sam would have been sure he was.

There were other people there.  Sam was a little surprised to find Sharon Carter sitting in the chair beside the bed, her fingers tender where they curled around Clint’s hand.  She turned at his entrance and offered something of a sweet smile, standing and reaching over to him.  “Sam.  It’s nice to see you.”

Sam came closer, dropping his bag and hugging her briefly.  “What are you doing here?”

Sharon was as put-together as she always was, but there was fear in her eyes.  Sam had only recently met her during the battle against SHIELD, but he could see that.  “I talked to Clint right before it happened.  He said he called me back.”  Her pretty face collapsed into a troubled frown.  “Never did, so I got worried.”

  There was another person in the room who was chatting softly with Stark.  He was an older man, with mussed salt and pepper hair and the hints of a beard framing his mouth and jaw.  He was nicely dressed in khaki pants and a white shirt underneath a gray blazer.  Sam recognized him instantly, even before he held out his hand.  “Bruce Banner,” the man offered.

“Sam Wilson,” Sam said, shaking Banner’s hand.

Banner smiled faintly.  This was more than a little intimidating, right up there with meeting Captain America and Iron Man.  How the hell had this become his life?  Unlike Steve and Stark, though, Banner wasn’t anything like what he’d envisioned to Hulk to be.  He’d always imagined a mad scientist vibe, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.  Banner seemed like a soft-spoken sort, unimposing and unintimidating, mild-mannered and calm.  Sam supposed that actually made very good sense.  “It’s nice to meet you, though I wish the circumstances were better, to be honest.  And I’m sorry for not being around during the summer’s fun and games.  I just got back from India myself a couple of days ago and didn’t get Tony’s messages until this morning.”  Bruce’s eyes quickly flicked over him, reading and analyzing.  “Steve didn’t come back with you?”

Sam shook his head.  “No.  He went after Natasha.”

Bruce frowned, not pleased but significantly more restrained about it than Stark was.  Stark was still fuming.  “Apparently there’s a goddamn club,” the inventor muttered disdainfully.

“We don’t know anything yet, Tony,” Bruce reminded gently.  “And you said they were together, right?  What would you do if Pepper was missing?”

“I’d look for her, naturally.  But we’re not sitting around here wondering if Pepper sold us out to our enemies.”  That _hurt_ , even if it was true, and Sam was glad Steve wasn’t there to hear it.  Tony clenched his jaw, shaking his head and folding his arms over his chest in indignant resignation.  “Besides, Cap’s our leader, isn’t he?  We need him here.  To _lead_ us.”

“That’s funny, coming from you,” Bruce chided, though not entirely facetiously.  Stark’s jaw tightened even more at that, which made Sam wonder anew at how close the Avengers actually were.  So little _actual_ information had been released about them in the wake of the Battle of New York, and what there was had obviously been propaganda of sorts, spouted by SHIELD and embellished by the politicians and propagated by the media.  Captain America, their leader, the one to whom they all deferred because he was the most trusted, the most noble and venerated, a moral compass.  Iron Man, the eccentric billionaire who put his own ego on the backburner to be a team player, the genius whose tech was powering earth’s mightiest heroes.  The Hulk, a monster turned hero through Bruce Banner’s implacable restraint.  Black Widow and Hawkeye, two master assassins stepping out of the shadows and into the light to finally fight for what was right.  Thor, the brash and powerful Prince of Asgard, an alien by all rights, who would bravely sacrifice himself for earth and its citizens.  This group of amazing people, all putting aside their differences to work together as the perfect team to save humanity.

Well, from what he’d gleaned from Steve about the Battle of New York, they almost hadn’t united.  The Avengers had almost failed.  And how many times had they fought together since then?  _None_.  Well, during the battle against SHIELD in DC, half of them had been there, Sam supposed.  Still, he was uncertain how well they _actually_ worked together.  How much they trusted each other.  Not much, if they were so willing to immediately cast aside one of their own in the face of the little evidence they had that Natasha was a traitor.  _Pot calling the kettle._

There was one thing that was clear to him, however.  They did need Captain America.

But Steve wasn’t there.  They’d have to make do without him.

Sam pushed all that aside.  He looked sadly at Barton’s unmoving body.  “What’s wrong with him?” he asked softly.

Banner sighed.  “I wish I could tell you, but I don’t know.  He suffered some trauma to his brain.  They did a CT scan yesterday at Mt. Sinai, and there’s damage, but I don’t think it’s enough to account for this.”

“Why he won’t wake up?” Sam said.  Bruce nodded regretfully.  “Has he woken up at all?”

Sharon sat again.  Her eyes were teeming with worry again, her lips pulled tight and cheeks pale.  She reached for Clint’s bruised hand, her touch too soft for friendship but not tender enough for anything else.  “No.  He’s been like this.  Completely unresponsive.”

That was dismaying.  Granted, Sam wasn’t sure what he thought about Barton.  He, like Sharon, had been forced to participate in HYDRA’s plots as a double agent.  However, where the worst of Sharon’s transgressions had been reporting Steve’s location to the enemy, Clint had been significantly more involved in all of the damage done to them.  Sam had put all that aside during the battle over the Potomac because he’d had to.  He’d followed Steve’s example, turning the other cheek in order to get it done.  Afterward, he’d tried to let it go.  It was hard to forget and even harder to forgive.

It didn’t matter.  He didn’t want to see another man reduced to this, whatever this was.  Bruce appeared helpless and frustrated.  Considering the rumored size of his intellect, that was intensely discouraging.  Sam sincerely doubted there was much that could confuse or stump the world-renowned physicist and biochemist, so if Banner was at a loss, they were dealing with something truly dangerous.  “Even if the head trauma is more serious than it seems and is causing this coma, it definitely doesn’t explain the blood work.”

Sam tore his eyes from Barton’s lax face to the Avengers.  “What do you mean?”

Stark shook his head darkly.  “Something’s really _wrong_ about this.  His blood results are way out of whack.  Like seriously fucked up.  He has major organ failure all over.  Kidney failure.  Liver failure.  _Heart_ failure.”

Something cold and unpleasant rolled over Sam before settling in the pit of his stomach.  “What could cause that?”

“Any number of things,” Banner answered.  “Hypovolemic shock.”

“Only most of his blood’s still in his body,” Tony added.  “Not that it’s doing him much good.”

Bruce went on.  “Or a massive systemic infection could do it.  Septic shock.”

“Only he has no signs of infection,” Tony returned again.  “His white count’s normal.  No fever.  Nothing.  I’ve ordered every blood culture that I could think of, and he’s as clean as a whistle.”

Sam winced.  He didn’t know anything about medicine beyond treating injuries in the field, but this sounded extremely bad.  “What are you saying?”

Bruce was visibly pained.  “He’s dying, and we don’t know why.  His vital signs are depressed.  His pulse is low.  His respiration and O2 sats are deplorable.  His blood pressure’s down.  Brain activity’s almost vegetative…  It’s almost like…”  His eyes glazed with frustration.  “I’ve seen this before but in terminally ill patients.  The elderly.  The body giving up, shutting down, but there’s always a _reason_ behind it.  And even that was never as bad as this.  This…  This is like something sucked his life away.  I don’t know how else to explain it.”

 _Sucked his life away.  Holy hell._   Sam ached hearing that.  He looked back at Barton, at the whiteness of his face and the frailness of his form.  Long lashes pressed tightly to pale skin.  Dried lips barely parted, lungs barely rattling with breath…  “What do we do?” he asked quietly, turning back to Banner.

It was more than obvious Banner was at a loss.  “Without knowing how this happened to him, I don’t know.  All I know is that if we don’t do something soon, he’s going to die.  If his breathing gets any worse, I’m going to have to intubate him.  He’s headed straight for cardiac arrest if these results are any indication.  And even if we could save him, which is a huge if, there’s permanent damage.”  Sam closed his eyes.  He felt Sharon stiffen beside him, her slight form tightening almost imperceptibly.  _Goddamn it._

Tony didn’t seem interested in accepting defeat.  Sam had already discovered he rarely was.  “So we need to track down that thing that did this to him.  It’s pretty much our only hope at this point.  You and Rogers said that HYDRA was moving against us.”

Sam swallowed thickly and nodded, tearing his eyes away from Barton with great effort.  “Yeah.  HYDRA or some faction of it.”

“Alright.  Let’s get it all on the table, and you can explain to us what the hell is going on.”

_I would if I could._

* * *

A few minutes later, they were gathered in the main holographic work area in the center of the infirmary.  Tony stood in its center, waving his arms like he was conducting an orchestra.  He might as well have been, for all the grace the sections of the display were working together to analyze the pertinent data.  Tony pulled one image to him and enlarged it.  He took a step back.  “This is the best image we have of this fucker,” he declared.

Their best image wasn’t very good.  It was blurry, probably taken from a cellphone, but it was clearly some sort of monstrous man standing in an alleyway.  He wore a cape of some sort, but it didn’t do much to hide how huge and muscular he was.  What was it Stark had said before?  _Over eight feet tall.  Five hundred pounds._   It sure as hell looked like he was both those things, a veritable giant with gray skin and dirty blond hair.  However, beyond that, it was impossible to make out his features.  “I’ve had JARVIS trying to clean it up.  Get a better view of his face, one that I can compare to SHIELD’s databases and anything else I can get my hands on.  I’ve been running the trace algorithm, but it’s not coming back with anything.”

“What about these tentacle things?” Sam asked, squinting at the image and trying to make some sense of it.

Tony pushed the picture of the man aside and snatched another one.  “See that?”  Tony pointed to a long silver rope-like appendage extending from the man’s wrist.  There was another on the other side.  The two of them were long, coiled up in the air even.  Sam had to admit that they looked _exactly_ as Tony had described them.  Tentacles.  “I have no idea what these things are.  All I can say is this picture was taken after he dropped Barton.”

“How do you know that?” Bruce asked.

Tony shrugged.  “Took some doing and running this through quite a few rescrubbing programs, but…”  He zoomed in on the lower left corner where a dark shadow slowly sharpened into a very human-like shape.  The spiky brown hair was pretty unmistakable.  It was Clint, crushed against the corner of the alley, very clearly unconscious.

“Do we know anything more about what happened?” Sam asked.

Sharon shook her head.  “No.  Apparently Romanoff left the Tower around nine o’clock in the morning yesterday.  Stark’s AI said Barton followed her.  They ended up at the Hyatt.  The FBI was there to arrest Romanoff, but before they could, this… _guy_ showed up and engaged the agents on the scene.  The FBI agents seriously unloaded on him, and it didn’t seem to even hurt him.”

“God,” Sam whispered.  “What the hell is he?”

Tony shook his head.  “No clue.  I take it in your adventures in HYDRA-land you didn’t come across a secret file about Frankenstein here.”

“Not exactly.”

“But you know why Romanoff disappeared,” Tony concluded.  “And you know what Rogers doesn’t want us to know.”  Sam gritted his teeth and stiffened, shifting his weight to hide his discomfort.  “What?  You two weren’t very convincing about it not being important.”  Tony stared at him, not entirely suspiciously but definitely determined.  Determined to get answers to a question that had obviously been bothering him for days, probably since Steve had called him for information about Yelena Belova.  “What did she do?  Back when we talked over the phone, I heard you say she was one of them.  One of HYDRA?”

He was caught.  He supposed he could have lied.  Maybe he should have.  Steve hadn’t asked him to keep this secret (at least, not directly), but obviously that had been his wish.  It felt akin to betrayal to tell them about what they’d found in Europe.  However, on the flip side, this was too serious to not tell the truth.  Clint was dying.  If Natasha was involved, Sam needed to let the others know.  That was far more important than Steve wanting to keep this quiet to protect her reputation or give her the benefit of the doubt.  Sam was almost certain that if Steve was there, that if he could actually see Clint and see how bad this was, he would agree.  “We think…  I think she was the one who was delivering samples of Steve’s blood to HYDRA.”

The silence was rife with shock and uncertainty.  Banner’s brow was creased in confusion.  He stared at Sam like he didn’t understand, glanced at Tony, and then looked back at Sam again.  “HYDRA has Captain America’s blood,” he said slowly, like he was waiting (or hoping) for someone to tell him that wasn’t the case.

But it was.  Sam nodded grimly.  “Yeah.  Tons of it, dating back to right when they found Steve in the ice.”

Banner blanched.  Tony shot accusatory eyes at Sharon, like he was lashing out at whoever was a convenient target.  And the remains of SHIELD were always a convenient target nowadays.  “Did you know about this?”

Sharon was a cool customer.  She narrowed her eyes, her lips pressing into a frown.  “Of course not.”  Tony didn’t seem convinced, his hands planted on his hips and his glare cutting.  “What, you think I was slipping into his apartment at night and stealing blood samples from him while he slept?  I’m good at what I do, Stark, but not that good.  Or that evil.”

“Maybe not you,” Bruce said unhappily.  “But you’re saying Natasha was involved with this?”

Now it came to it.  Sam had to tell the truth, no matter how much he didn’t want to.  “Yelena Belova’s name was connected to the samples delivered to the HYDRA lab Steve and I discovered, and Yelena Belova’s–”

“An alias for Black Widow,” Tony finished.  He looked aghast.  “She didn’t…  I mean…  Jesus Christ.  Would she do that to him?  Is that why they broke up?”

“I don’t think so.  Steve didn’t know about this until we found it.”

“Then why did he leave her?” Tony asked, like it was any of his business.  Perhaps it was becoming their business more and more.  When Steve and Natasha’s relationship was so seemingly and intricately tied into the plots of HYDRA and SHIELD and the fate of the Avengers, it had to be.

Still, Sam didn’t feel up to telling them about his suspicions about Natasha’s previous relationship ( _previous – am I even sure about that?_ ) with Barnes.  “I don’t know.  He wouldn’t tell me.”

“Well, as much as it sucks ass, and it does, this does kinda make sense.  This dude you guys asked me to look up…”  Tony reached into the holographic display and pulled some images forward.  Sam recognized the face immediately from that night in Prague.  “Aleksander Lukin.  Born April 18th, 1953.  General in the Russian army.  Well, potentially an ex-general; I guess Moscow cut ties with him when the Soviet Union fell.  This guy’s a real gem.  He’s been investigated by SHIELD, the CIA, and MI6 for his involvement in numerous illegal arms rings, the sort that have been arming some of world’s nicest terrorist organizations.  The bombings in Afghanistan in 2006?  They think those were his.  They also think he’s been involved in some human trafficking and some rather unethical human research practices.  There are dozens of other killings and attacks around the world that he’s allegedly been linked to, which, if he was the one calling the Winter Soldier’s shots for a couple of decades, that makes sense.  He’s a real sweetheart.  Cruel, violent, and power hungry.  And…”  Tony brought another picture forward.  Sam didn’t recognize this man, but he looked about as friendly as Lukin.  A boxy chin framed by a thick beard and dark, piercing eyes.  “Lukin’s got ties to this guy, Yuri Brushov.  For those of you don’t recognize him, this yahoo ran the infamous Russian Red Room and was recently put out of commission by Rogers and Romanoff.”

 _Just like Steve said.  Natasha worked with Brushov.  Barnes worked with Lukin.  And once upon a time they worked together._   “What does any of that have to do with HYDRA?”  Sharon asked, folding her arms over her chest and shaking her head.  “I don’t pretend to be an expert on this, but I didn’t think the Russians and the Nazis got along all that well.”

“That I don’t know,” Tony admitted, “but there has to be a connection, because Lukin’s pet ended up working for Pierce.  Some sort of assassin loaner program?  Who the hell knows.  Point is: it can’t be a coincidence that this guy showed up in this secret HYDRA lair you and Rogers found.”

 _What a mess._ “Who else was there at this meeting?” Banner asked.

“Two other guys,” Sam supplied.  “One was Russian.  The other was American and obviously connected to Stern.”

“Yeah, well, I did what you guys asked and poured over what the Justice Department has on Stern to see if I could track the mystery man down.  I wasn’t quite brave enough to hack the government, not when an Avenger is being accused of treason, but everything I could get my hands on suggested that what Stern was doing was tied to Pierce and Sitwell and them alone.  So that’s a dead end.  Maria’s trying to get more information out of the FBI on that, too, but I don’t know if she will.”

“And the other Russian?” Sharon asked.

Sam shrugged in frustrated weariness.  “We didn’t recognize him.  Whoever he was, he was in control over the other two.  Like an alpha dog.  Wait.”  Sam walked closer to one corner of the holographic display, where files concerning Vitalacorp were minimized.  “Tony, can you bring this up?”  Tony joined him, sticking his fingers capably into the files and expanding them so they were larger and more visible.  A picture of a man with thinning hair and a cheap suit appeared.  But the shape of his face and the intensity of his eyes…  _Yeah.  What are the odds?_   “That’s the dude.”

Tony’s eyes narrowed as he brought up more information.  “Albert Malik, CEO of Vitalacorp.”  He read quickly over the data streaming by.  “ _This_ is the guy evil and badass enough to be in command over Lukin?”

“Well, he was older.  And bald.  And… beefier.  But, yeah, that’s him.”

“I’ve looked over this!  He’s a nobody.  He has no ties to anything even remotely related to this.  I’ve had JARVIS checking every conceivable connection between him and HYDRA or the Red Room, and there’s nothing.  Nothing aside from what you guys saw and Black Widow’s apparent connection to Vitalacorp.”

“What connection?” Bruce asked.

Tony shook his head.  “We don’t know exactly.  Vitalacorp’s offices in Prague were the last known location SHIELD had for her.”

“And Belova’s Romanoff,” Bruce clarified.  He winced, shaking his head.  He was a latecomer to this mess, so this was probably something of a shock to him.  Hell, it was a shock to Sam, and he’d been involved from the get-go.  “Is there any chance they’re two people using the same alias?”

“If they are, it’s awfully coincidental that Romanoff’s wanted by the government.  The FBI must know something we don’t, something about what she was doing.”

Sharon stepped closer.  “I’m still trying to work my own connections.  I’ve got some friends in the FBI, Ex-SHIELD agents and people I used to work with.  With any luck, I’ll have access to the crime scene reports in a day or two.  Maybe there are some answers there.”

That didn’t appease Tony.  “Look, we all know what she does.  She hid herself in my company to spy on me for SHIELD.  She manipulated you into getting involved with the Avengers, Bruce.  She actually got _Loki_ to talk.  She lies and she cheats.  She uses people.  Even Barton was suspicious!  Why else would he follow her like he did?”  That was damning.  They all knew Clint was close with Natasha.  If he didn’t trust her…  There was no answer to any of this, at least not one that made any sense.  And with Clint as hurt as he was, it didn’t look like they’d be getting an answer any time soon.

“What does Cap think?” Bruce asked after a moment of pained silence.

Sam didn’t know what to say.  He thought of Steve’s nightmares, of his broken heart and breaking spirit, of his dead, lost eyes.  “I don’t know what he thinks.”  _He doesn’t even know._

“Obviously he thinks she had nothing to do with it,” Tony snapped disdainfully.  “Why else would he be trying to save her?  And honestly, what the hell’s the matter with him, sleeping with a woman that shot him?  Most people would take that as a sign that maybe, just _maybe_ , it’s not meant to be.”

“She _shot_ him?” Banner gasped.

“Where have you been, Banner?  It’s all over the internet.  Yes, apparently about six months ago Black Widow put a bullet in Captain America’s heart on their mission to Mother Russia.”  Tony’s eyes darkened.  “He almost _died_.  But, in the fucked up world of HYDRA and SHIELD, I guess that’s a precursor to the world’s greatest love affair.”

“Jesus, Stark, cut him some slack,” Sam returned, tired of Tony’s attitude already.  “He’s hurting bad.  You saw what they did to him.  And he’s trying to do what he thinks is best.  He always does.”

That gave Tony pause.  His scowl loosened, and he looked down at his feet.  “Yeah,” he said softly.  “Yeah.  Sorry.  But that doesn’t excuse what Romanoff did, or what she’s doing now.”

“No,” Sam agreed.  _It doesn’t._ The silence that followed was thick with pain and uncertainty.  Sam sighed, dragging his eyes over Lukin and Brushov and Malik.  Pierce and HYDRA.  The Winter Soldier.  He prayed Natasha was not the link among all of these disparate pieces.  “There hasn’t been any sign of her?” he eventually asked.

“No,” Tony said tiredly, “and I’ve got eyes and ears on everything I can.  I don’t know what Rogers hopes to accomplish.  Romanoff’s gone.  He’s not going to find her.”

 _“I can find her.”_   Steve’s voice, so strong and sure.  _“I don’t know how.  But I will.”_

Tony released a long breath.  “I don’t know what else to do right now.  Pray Hill finds something?  Pray your contacts in the FBI come through with something?  I don’t know.  Without something more to go on, we’re dead in the water.”

Then Sam remembered.  “Wait.  Hold on.  Steve took something from that HYDRA lab in Prague.”  He went back to Clint’s room, trying not to look at the archer’s fallen form again, and snatched his backpack where he’d dropped it.  He went back to the lab, unzipping it and fishing inside as he walked.  He found the spike of metal wrapped in Steve’s shirt.  The others watched in confusion as he pulled it loose.  He held it out to Tony.

Tony appraised the item, his brown eyes darting between Sam’s hand and his face.  He took Steve’s shirt, lifting the cloth away.  “What the hell is this?” he asked when the shard of silver was revealed.

“No idea,” Sam said.  “Steve thought you might be able to figure it out.”

Tony took the spike, holding it up and analyzing it closely.  His eyes narrowed as he slipped his fingers along it.  Sam hadn’t seen it in a few days.  He’d forgotten how its surface gleamed so flawlessly, so smooth that it almost seemed liquid.  Bruce came closer.  “Steel?” he asked.

“No,” Tony replied quietly.  He seemed perplexed.  “Too heavy.  It’s not silver, either.  I’ve never seen something with…  It doesn’t seem to have any imperfections.  That’s some precision manufacturing, and I don’t think Vitalacorp has the expertise or means to do that.”

Banner took the spike from Tony.  “It’s really warm.”

Sam shrugged.  “Yeah, that’s what Steve said.”

“Really?”  Tony took it back from Bruce.  He shook his head in confusion, trading the spike between his hands.  “It’s not warm to me.  Was it to you?”  Sam shook his head.  “Carter?”

Sharon came closer, not entirely certain of this from the hesitant expression on her face, but she tentatively touched the spike.  “Feels cold,” she observed.

“Well, what the hell,” Tony breathed.  “You sure you’re not, I dunno, temperature sensitive or something from spending a couple months in the jungle?”

Bruce gave Tony a wan look.  “Let’s get this thing over into the lab and hook it up to a mass spectrometer.  Maybe we can–”

There was a low rattle.  Tony looked up as the ceiling vibrated. “What the hell?” he whispered.  He spun, his eyes wild and angry.  “J, what now?”

JARVIS’ voice cut through the room.  “Something is scaling the exterior of the building.”

 _“What?”_   The Tower rattled again.  Tony clenched a fist at his side.  “JARVIS, can you show us?”

“Negative.  Exterior cameras are malfunctioning.  I believe it is headed toward the helipad.”

“Shit.  Banner, Carter, stay with Barton,” Tony ordered.

Bruce was surprised.  “Don’t you think I should–”

“No!  Not until we know what we’re dealing with!”  Tony was running out of the lab after that shout.

Sam followed.  They were down the hall, nearly to the elevator in fact, before Tony noticed.  “What?  You didn’t say anything about me staying,” Sam said.

They got inside the lift.  “JARVIS, take us up!”  It zoomed upward at an increased speed, so much so that Sam almost lost his balance with the jerking movement.  Tony actually steadied him, a warm hand on his shoulder.  They were silent a moment, both too stricken to really manage a coherent thought.  “I was, uh, working on a new suit for you.  I guess I’ll put some gas on it, since it seems like the world’s gunning for us and we’re running a tad short on Avengers.”  That was touching, in an odd sort of way, and Sam glanced at Stark expecting that the billionaire was shining him on a little.  However, there was nothing but genuine sincerity in Tony’s voice and nothing but regret in his eyes, like he truly was kicking himself for not completing his project earlier.  “One goddamn thing after another.”

They reached the floor with the helipad.  As they exited, Tony whipped out his right hand.  Along the display case in the rear of the spacious room were numerous Iron Man suits, and one of them powered up.  The case slid open, and the suit zoomed out toward Tony.  It encased him smoothly, an elegant display of complete precision that was both awe-inspiring and a little dismaying.  _I didn’t even bring a gun._

Iron Man turned to face him.  However, before Stark could say anything, the tall windows on the other side of the room shattered.  Sam ducked when the glass exploded inward, shards bursting far inside the room.  He peeked over Iron Man’s shoulder to see _him_ – the monster or whatever the hell he was – smashing the rest of the windows.  He charged inside Stark Tower like a raging bull, every bit as hideous as the pictures had shown.  Stringy, unwashed blond hair flowed behind him, and gray muscles bulged beneath that brown cloak.  “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Tony yelled, but it was too late.  The monster plowed him down like he was nothing.

“Holy shit,” Sam breathed, backing up uselessly as the guy got a gigantic hand curled around Iron Man’s throat.  “Tony!”

“Run, Sam!” Tony yelled.  He managed to get his palm repulsor up, and it ignited with a blast of white light that exploded in the man’s face.  It didn’t even faze him.  “Get out of here, you son of a bitch!”  He struggled, firing again.  The monster grabbed his wrist and squeezed, and Sam swore he could hear Iron Man’s vambrace being crushed.  “You got a problem with listening, asshole?  Get the fuck out of my Tower!”

“Where is Black Widow?” the man growled.  His voice was a slur of speech, a deep, beastly baritone that sounded about as human and natural as he looked.  He pulled Tony closer, completely undaunted despite the power sizzling against him from Stark’s weapons.  “Where is she, Iron Man?”

“Fuck off,” Tony returned.  “She’s not here.”

The monster simply tossed him like he was _nothing_.  He threw Iron Man head over heels, and Stark smashed into the bar on the other side of the room, breaking wood and glass.  He lay there for a moment, seemingly dazed, and that was all it took for the monster to lock its gaze on Sam.  _Oh, shit!_   Sam scrambled back, but he wasn’t fast enough.  He wasn’t going anywhere.  A twisting line of gleaming silver shot out of the man’s right wrist, careening across the room like liquid lightning, and coiled around Sam’s calf.  Horror rushed over him, cold and disgusting, and he could only heave a frantic wail as he was yanked toward the beast.

Iron Man was back on his feet, unloading blasts from his palm repulsors in rapid succession, but the strikes did not nothing.  Tony was shouting, propelling through the air with the boosters in his boots, but a swipe of a tentacle from the left arm knocked him back.  Sam remembered to struggle somewhere during all of this, flailing and scrabbling over the floor for _something_ to stop him from being dragged.  There wasn’t anything, and that terrifying realization was followed quickly by a miserable sensation of weightlessness as he was practically whipped off the ground.  When he managed to overcome the vertigo and force his eyes open, he saw he was dangling upside down, and that long appendage was snaking around his leg tighter and tighter.  Over the roar of his heart in his ears, Sam heard Tony shouting.  “Let him go!  JARVIS, we need the Hulk up here!  Right the fuck now–”  Tony’s orders were cut off.  Sam watched in dread as the other tentacle lashed out, catching Iron Man across the chest and dropping him to the floor.  In a blink, the silver appendage wrapped about Stark’s leg and threw him off the top of the Tower.

It wouldn’t stop Tony, not in the least, but it was enough to give the monster a moment alone with Sam.  Sam felt powerful legs thundering beneath him, running across the floor so fast and so roughly that it seemed like his brain was being mushed up and down in his skull.  The disorientation was so awful that he thought he’d be sick, so he squeezed his eyes shut.  When he looked again, he was looking down over the edge of the Tower.  “Oh, God,” he moaned.  “Fuck!”

The tentacle raised him slightly higher so that he was staring at a gray face and blood red eyes.  The man was scowling, furious and frustrated.  “Where’s Captain America?” he snarled, pulling Sam closer.  Sam weakly struggled, but it was no use.  He couldn’t get away, and even if he’d been able to, he’d fall.  “You were with him.  Where is he now?  Where was he going?”

“I – I don’t know!” he lied.

The monster didn’t take well to that.  With the blood rushing miserably to his head, Sam could barely make sense of anything, but he saw energy exploding against the man’s huge chest.  He heard Stark yelling, weapons firing, things _shaking_.  Then that tentacle slithered further up his body, wrapping around his legs and groin and chest, tightening and squeezing and _choking_ , and cold rushed over him like he was plummeting into a frozen ocean.  Agony came hard and harsh as _something_ seemed to invade his body everywhere and all at once, invade and spread around and rip at his skin and organs and muscles.  At his very core.  His heart couldn’t beat.  His lungs couldn’t breathe.  His blood had turned to poison in his veins and his bones were like ash.  It felt like…  It felt like _dying._

But it lasted less than a second.  Something large collided with the monster, and Sam was knocked loose from his grasp.  He was in too much of a haze to realize he was falling, at least until he was caught by Iron Man.  “Jesus!  Sam?  Sam!”  Sam couldn’t get his eyes open.  He couldn’t focus, at least not enough to really make sense of what was happening.  Strong arms encased in metal held him tight, and he had the vague impression that he was flying, but he didn’t know why or where.  All he saw before he passed out was dark and heavy clouds gathering overhead, and lightning crashed down on the top of Stark Tower where a man in a red cape was fighting a demon.

* * *

It took some effort to wake up.  More than it should have, at any rate.

Sam groaned, struggling to get his eyes to open.  They were stuck together, gummed up it seemed, and he couldn’t pry them apart any easier if he’d actually used his fingers.  But that was out of the question because his hands were about as responsive as his eyelids.  Eventually, he climbed higher and higher out of the murk of unconsciousness, high enough that the signals from the parts of his brain that still seemed to be working finally reached his nerves and muscles.  He could feel his heart beating.  His lungs breathing.  His blood, warm in his veins and his bones, strong and sturdy.  He was still alive.

But what had touched him…  Darkness in his soul.

Sam gasped and lurched up.  His pulse was racing now, and he could feel _every cell_ in his body surging, like electricity was suddenly jolting through him.  He couldn’t focus for a moment, the rush of life so magnificent and chaotic and overwhelming that his senses were utterly scattered.  Over the course of the following minutes, that powerful thrill faded and he could feel and think again.  He didn’t recognize where he was at first.  Then memory returned, and he realized this was the medical ward in Stark Tower, with its expensive equipment and chrome, steel, and glass walls.

_Holy hell…  What happened?_

Then that came back too, tearing out of the haze in his head.  The man who’d attacked Clint coming back.  The feeling of those tentacles tight around his body, pressing into his flesh, and then…

Sam jumped off the bed.  His legs felt like rubber, weak in the knees and poor excuses for support, but he grabbed onto something sturdy and steadied himself.  His heart was fluttering in his chest.  He felt weak and nauseous, like he was coming out from under a really bad bout with the flu or something of the like.  He didn’t seem _right_ , not in the least, like his limbs weren’t his own and his brain wasn’t firing right.  But he was alive and he could move and think.  That was enough.

His first couple of steps were uneven and unbalanced, but he kept on his feet and limped to the door of the room.  Out in the corridor, it was dark and quiet.  He could hear voices down the way a little, so he walked slowly, trying not to be bothered by the fundamental fact that he wasn’t well.  The distance started out seeming infinite, but he managed it.  He passed Clint’s room.  Clint, who was still in the bed, unchanged.  Unmoving.  _Dying._   Sam closed his eyes and fought for his breath, for his composure.  He knew what that felt like now.  Christ Almighty, that could have been him.

“Sam?”  Sharon’s soft call drew his attention, and he opened his eyes and spotted her at Clint’s side.  She immediately stood and came to him.  Her concern was obvious.  “You shouldn’t be out of bed.”

“I’m alright.”  He heard himself speak, but he felt detached from it.  God, what the hell had that bastard done to him?  His tongue felt like a lump of clay in his mouth, and everything tasted terrible.  “What happened?  How long was I out?”

“About a day,” Sharon replied.  “Here.  Everyone’s this way.”

“Clint?”  He knew the answer, had seen it for himself, but he still hoped.

She shook her head.  “There’s been no change.”  She smiled, tried to and failed.  She took his arm, helping him continue toward the lab.  He was shuffling quite a bit more than he liked, this weakness and exhaustion deep set into his bones.  “Whatever that thing did to you, you only got a fraction of the dose Clint did.  You were lucky.”

 _Lucky._   He knew he was, but he didn’t feel like it.  Sharon smiled a little again, this time more successfully.  “Come on.”  They kept walking, and a moment later they were out in the lab.

The group assembled there turned.  Stark flashed half a grin that did little to hide the relief in his eyes.  “Hey, the bird’s out of his nest,” he announced as happily as he could.  He dropped what he was doing and came over, clasping Sam on the shoulder hesitantly.  “How are you feeling, Wilson?”

How to describe this?  “Weird.”  Groggy.  Numb.  Distant.  Achy.  Just… _wrong_.

Bruce was pulling a chair forward.  “Here.  You’ll be okay, but you need to take it easy.  It didn’t do nearly as much damage to you as it did to Clint, probably due to a lesser exposure.”  Sharon and Stark helped him sit, and it was more of a blessing than it should have been.  A large hand held a glass of water in front of him, and he took it with a murmured thanks, not really looking up.  Then he _did_ look up.  _Holy shit._

Tony couldn’t resist the urge to rib him a little.  “Sam Wilson, may we present the Prince of Asgard, Thor Odinson.  You can thank him for saving your ass.”

Thor actually smiled at him.  It was a soft smile, a gentle thing that still lit up his bearded face and sky blue eyes with concern.  He was huge, as big and impressive as Steve, the bulge of well-proportioned muscles filling out the blue polo shirt he wore.  His messy blond hair was gathered into a pony tail.  He seemed so strange, standing there in a normal man’s clothes when he was anything but.  This guy was an alien.  A _god_.  Some vague memories of dark clouds and blistering lightning, of a hammer roaring through the air and a red cape, danced through Sam’s muddled mind.  “It is nice to meet you, Samuel, and no gratitude is necessary.  I have heard you are a great friend to our captain and were of immense aid to him during his battle with HYDRA.  And I fear I must apologize for not participating myself, but I was preoccupied with worrying news from Asgard.”

Sam couldn’t manage a coherent thought, much less an answer beyond an embarrassing “okay”.

“Drink,” Tony ordered, “before you pass out.”

“What happened?” Sam asked as he took a sip.  The water tasted wonderful.

Tony cocked his head.  “Well, let’s just say that Frankenstein wasn’t too thrilled with taking on both the Hulk and Thor.  And me.”  He smiled, but it didn’t really reach his eyes.  “He took off right after zapping you.”

“Zapping me with what?” Sam asked.  “What was it?”

“We still don’t know, but we were able to learn a lot more,” Bruce declared.  “You want to hear about this now?  You really should be sleeping.”

“After what happened to me?  Screw that.  JARVIS, show me everything,” Sam ordered with far more bravado than he actually felt.  A slew of new images and data flashed before them, so bright and quick that it made Sam’s head spin a little.  He squinted, trying to make his eyes and brain work.  There was footage from their encounter with the monster, clearly recorded by Iron Man.  He stood against Sharon’s soft protests and stepped closer to the video.  He saw himself dangling over the edge of the building, the monster’s tentacle holding him upside down.  He saw himself saying an answer that couldn’t be heard.  And then he saw the coils of metal around him _light up_ , and it took his beleaguered mind a beat to realize that the light was flowing.  Flowing like energy.

It made him shudder, remembering all too clearly the cold, cold pain.  “What’s it putting in me?”

“It’s not putting anything in you,” Bruce said quietly.  “It’s drawing something _away_ from you.”

Suddenly it made awful sense.  What happened to Clint.  What he was feeling.  “Like something sucked my life away.”

Bruce looked both disgusted and apologetic.  “Yeah.”

Finally something made him feel warm and alive again.  Rage.  “How is that even possible?”

“We don’t know,” Tony said, “but we have some ideas now at least.  First, this spike of metal you brought us?”  Tony gestured to a spot on the lab counter behind him, where the spike was resting on a pedestal and hooked up to numerous pieces of equipment.  “It has some very peculiar properties.  It’s not any sort of metal I’ve ever seen before.  It seems to generate its own EM field, a really potent one, which is pretty impossible.”

“Electro-magnetic,” Sharon quietly supplied, like she was well aware what it was like to have no idea what they were saying.  She probably did since she’d been dealing with Stark and Banner’s science-speak and technobabble for the past twenty-hours hours.  Her phone chirped, and she took it out of her pocket it.  “Excuse me a minute, guys.”

“What’s up?” Tony asked.

“My friend at the FBI finally got a copy of the crime scene report from the Hyatt.  Crazy as it seems, I think paper trails are less traceable nowadays.  He’s in the lobby with it.  I’ll be right back.”  With that, she was out the door and headed to the elevator.

“Anyway,” Tony said, redirecting their attention, “here’s the really weird thing.  Ready for this?”  He seemed an amalgamation of excitement and worry, which just made him jittery and hard to watch.  “Thor claims it’s been enchanted with Asgardian magic.”

Sam was shocked.  He looked at Thor, waiting for an explanation.  Thor dropped his arms from his chest and actually seemed sorry, with his eyes dropping and his mighty form slightly slouching.  “It is true.  Heimdall contacted me some weeks ago, sensing that evil was perhaps stirring on Midgard.  He believed it was somehow connected to Loki’s malfeasance two years ago, perhaps a remnant of black magic from the Chitauri invasion.  I have spent much time since then attempting to track down this hint of foreboding, and that led me here.  This piece of metal has traces of Asgardian magic upon it.  I can feel it when I touch it.”

“What?  Steve said it felt warm.  And you said–”

“Yeah.  We think it has to do with Gamma exposure.  Both Rogers and Doctor Banner here are little walking radiation signatures, although Rogers much less so.” Tony explained.  Sam had never known that.  He’d spent all this time with Steve.  It was a bit disturbing, both that Steve was apparently radioactive and that he hadn’t been aware of it.  There was _a lot_ he didn’t know.  “It’s probably a side effect from Project: Rebirth.  And yours is a side effect from Project: ZOMG.”  Banner hit Stark with a withering glare.  “What?  The point is, people who’ve been irradiated with Gamma ray, Vitarays, or who are weird-ass aliens from another planet–”

“Realm,” Thor corrected.  “And my ass, as you call it, is not weird.”

“–seem to interact with this thing in a way us normal folk can’t, probably because it itself is irradiating a similar signature.”  Tony flung out his hands, and a few charts full of lines and numbers that meant nothing to Sam appeared on the 3D display.  “And this is the real disturbing thing.  Its signature bears a striking, uncanny resemblance to the one we measured back when we were trying to hunt down the Tesseract.”

“What the hell’s a Tesseract?” Sam asked, overwhelmed and getting irritated.

Tony gave him a mock glare.  “Haven’t you been keeping up with your homework?  Reading the files from the SHIELD dump?  HYDRA-Gate?”

Sam wasn’t in the mood.  “I’ve been kinda busy, Stark.”

Bruce stepped in to diffuse the tension.  “The Tesseract was a cosmic cube that played an important part of Loki’s invasion.  We’ll just leave it at that for the now.  The take-away from this is that this piece of metal is emitting a very similar energy signature to that and to Loki’s scepter, wherever that ended up.”

“I could not find it,” Thor admitted.  There was frustration in his tone.  “Heimdall suggested it might be to blame for the resurgence of evil on Midgard.”

Sam didn’t know who this Heimdall character was, but whoever he was, Thor clearly respected him a great deal.  “Okay, so this piece of metal is unusual.  What does that have to do with what happened to Barton?”

Tony and Bruce shared a look.  “We think that that monster – or whatever he is – that his arms could be made of it,” Banner said.  Sam’s face crinkled in confusion.  “It seems too coincidental otherwise.  Plus Iron Man was picking up all sorts of weird Gamma emissions during the fight, and a lot of them are similar to what we’re getting off of this sample.  Those readings had to be coming from him.  Whatever this metal is, its properties must allow it to… _influence_ biochemical energy.  Alter it.  Diminish it, maybe.  Draw it away from its source.  Act as a conduit?  I don’t know.  I don’t really have a good explanation, and frankly, I don’t want to test it.  Not after seeing what it did to Clint and what it almost did to you.”

“Wait, wait,” Sam said, raising his hand in a plea for the two scientists to stop.  “So you’re saying this freaky monster thing has tentacle arms made of that metal, and he’s using them to drain the life out of people.”

Again, Tony and Bruce glanced at each other.  “Yeah.  Pretty much.”

Sam couldn’t get his head around this.  It was too out there.  “How is that possible?  Why?  Who is he?  Where did he come from?”

“All good questions.  Unfortunately, we still have no idea,” Tony said.  “We have tons of beautiful pictures of this bastard now.”  He waved his arms into the display and, just as he said, a slew of images of the monster appeared.  Gray, pasty skin.  Stringy blond hair.  Red eyes.  The stuff of nightmares; Sam was pretty sure he’d have them after this.  He could see now that there was crimson under the cloak.  Red clothing?  It was hard to tell.  “But we’re not any closer to figuring out who or what he is.  I’ve got JARVIS running a face match on these better images.  Anything, J?”

“No, sir,” the AI responded.

“All we know is this weapon or whatever you want to call it that this thing has…  It doesn’t work on Thor.  Or the… Other Guy.  Again, we don’t know why.”  Bruce winced and shook his head.  “Thor’s physiology is different from a normal human’s.  And the Hulk is…”

“In a league of his own,” Tony offered.  “But whatever.  Once Dracula realized he couldn’t suck the life force out of the rest of us, he took off.”

Sam didn’t feel good about this.  Not good at all.  “It’s after Natasha.  Why?”

“Who knows?  Maybe she pissed off her employers,” Tony said.  That didn’t seem right.  _None_ of it seemed right.  Why send something this dangerous and powerful after Romanoff unless she had something HYDRA (assuming HYDRA controlled this monster) really wanted or needed?  And if she was working for them, why not just surrender it? 

The doors at the rear of the infirmary swished open, and Sharon was back, her sneakers soft on the floor.  She had a folder in her hand.  “Got it,” she announced, reaching inside and producing a USB stick.  And something else.  She handed the USB drive to Tony and a vial of red liquid to Bruce. 

“Is that blood?” Thor asked, dropping his arms from across his chest.

“Sure looks like it,” Bruce said quizzically, lifting the vial into the light and rotating it.  It was labeled, likely by the FBI, as evidence.

Sharon had a stack of papers in her hands, and she was skimming through it quickly.  She paled, glancing up at Sam.  “Apparently they found a bag full of blood samples in the hotel room.  This is one.”  Her face darkened.  “And Doctor Fine was dead at the scene.”

“What?” Tony gasped as he plugged the drive into one of the USB interfaces lining the wall.

“Who?” Thor asked.

“He was a SHIELD surgeon,” Carter explained.  She looked deeply troubled.  “Saved Director Fury’s life.  And Captain Rogers.  And Agent Romanoff.  According to this, the gunshot wound was self-inflicted.”

Tony had the data copied to the mainframe within seconds, and the CSI reports and photos were there in all of their gory and grisly detail.  Sure enough, Fine was laying on the floor of a hotel room, a gun in his limp hand and a hole in his head.  “Jesus,” Tony whispered.  “What the hell was he doing there?  And why commit suicide?”

“Was Natasha meeting him there?” Bruce asked.  He was already readying equipment to test the blood sample.  For what, Sam didn’t know, but not feeling good about this was quickly and nauseatingly amplifying into _really_ not feeling good about this.  “Did she have some kind of relationship with him?”

“Not that we know of,” Tony replied, “aside from him saving her life.  And Rogers.  He was with Fury every step of the way after the Winter Soldier tried to kill him.  Did she force him to shoot himself?  Make a murder look like a suicide?  Maybe he found out she was HYDRA.”

That sounded vicious and ugly and not at all like the Natasha they knew.  _This can’t be right._ “We don’t know for sure she’s HYDRA,” Sam reminded, and Tony glowered at first him and then the display, not all appreciative of the latest twists in this plot and their inability to explain them.

“Scan this, JARVIS,” Bruce ordered as he snapped latex gloves on his hands and proceeded to load a sample of the blood into one of the machines.  “Run everything.”

The equipment lit up and began to whir.  “Full results may take a few hours, Doctor Banner,” the AI reminded.

“Just give me what you get as you get it.”

“Of course.”

Sam shifted gingerly, unable to keep the grimace from his face.  Thor ( _Thor_ , for crying out loud) was there to grab him and steady him, and together they limped closer to the holographic workstation to stand beside Stark.  “This doesn’t make sense,” he said.  “What could she be seeing Fine for?”

“Does it matter?” Tony asked.  “JARVIS, start pulling together everything we have on Fine, too. Maybe–”

“Whoa.”  Bruce was looking at the tablet in his hand, probably sifting through some preliminary results.  “Hold on.  JARVIS, get this on the main screen.”  A wink later, the images from the crime scene and the latest attack were cast to the side to show another chart of data.  Sam squinted, unsure of what he was looking at.  “You see these molecules here in this blood sample?  You’re not going to believe this.  That’s…  Well, it’s the super soldier serum.”

Shocked didn’t quite describe the room.  “What,” Tony said, more doubtful than questioning.

Bruce was emphatic.  “Believe me, I have spent _years_ studying the serum.  I know it when I see it.  And that’s it.”

 _No._ “So this is Captain Rogers’ blood,” Thor surmised.  Sam prayed that it wasn’t true.

“She was selling Cap’s blood to HYDRA, just like you thought she was,” Tony said angrily.  The accusation hung over them, awful for its implications.  “She must have been getting it from Fine.  Barton interfered.  It went to shit.  Fine got killed.  The FBI tried to arrest her, and tall, dark, and nasty showed up to cover her escape and collect the goods.”

Sharon didn’t seem satisfied with that explanation.  “If that’s true, why is this monster thing still after her?”

“This does not sound like Natasha,” Thor said, shaking his head.  “I realize that I do not know her well, but she seems an honorable sort, loyal in battle and strong of heart.  She would not betray us like this.”

Tony was irritated.  “No, she would.  You missed it when we went over this before, so let me bring you up to speed.  She’s a liar and a spy and an assassin, and Rogers was foolish enough to get close.  Hell, she probably seduced him and roped the poor guy by his virgin balls into–”

“It wasn’t like that,” Sam insisted.  _Why the hell am I defending her?_   The evidence was damning.  She was using Yelena Belova as an alias to hide what she’d been doing.  And what she’d been doing was selling Steve’s blood to the enemy.  It was beyond doubt, beyond defense.  But defend her he did.  “You saw her, Tony.  When Pierce was torturing Steve in front of us, you _saw_ her.  She wasn’t acting.  She wasn’t lying.”

Tony flinched.  It was a small thing, but it spoke of how much even he had been tormented and troubled by what they had endured together.  “You don’t know that,” he returned, his tone louder and rougher with emotion.

“I do know that!  She couldn’t be that good of an actress!  And she wouldn’t do that to Steve!”

“What the hell, Wilson?  Yesterday _you_ were the one who told us that–”

“Guys.”  Bruce’s soft voice cut through the argument.  The group turned to him.  He was reading the data on his tablet again, and when he looked up, he shook his head.  “This isn’t Steve’s blood.”  The shock came again, this time sharper with confusion and dismay.  Banner sighed shortly.  “Steve’s blood is literally flooded with the super soldier serum.  Project: Rebirth fused the serum into his DNA, and his cells constantly replenish their supply of it.  It’s basically engrained into every part of him, bone, tissue, and blood, at very high concentrations.  This sample?  A fraction of that.  Still measurable, but not nearly enough to be from him.  I can run the genetic tests, but I’m pretty sure it’s not going to match.”

“So what does that mean?” Sharon said, alarmed.  She glanced at the results splayed all over the cluttered holographic display.  “If this isn’t Captain Rogers’ blood, then whose is it?”

The room was silent, but only for a second.  Then Bruce’s face went lax and his eyes widened.  “Oh, my God.  JARVIS, run a test for hCG.”

“What’s that?” Sam asked.

“hCG stands for human chorionic gonadotropin,” Bruce supplied, rushing to the holographic display.  He brushed the previous results aside and waited for JARVIS’ new data.  “It’s a hormone a woman’s body releases during the first trimester.”

Sam heard that.  They _all_ heard that.  But it didn’t make sense, so nobody spoke for a long moment.  Then Thor shifted, his brow furrowed in confusion.  “During the first trimester…  You mean if a woman is with child.”

“Yes,” Bruce said.  The computer beeped, and JARVIS immediately displayed the new data on the screen.  Bruce stepped back, like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.  “It’s positive.  This is… this has to be Natasha’s blood.”

 _Holy shit._ Sam couldn’t believe what he was hearing.  “You mean…”

“Natasha’s pregnant,” Bruce announced.

It was silent.  Again.  Nobody moved or spoke or even seemed to breathe.  It dragged on and on, time slowing to a crawl like it was being stretched light years.  Tony looked downright stupefied.  “You’re telling us Captain America knocked up Black Widow,” he finally said, “and the bad guys are after the baby.”  He was actually, _sincerely_ , looking for confirmation, like this situation was incomprehensible to him despite the level of his genius.

Bruce only nodded.

 _Holy shit!_   How could they have been so wrong?  Suddenly it all fell into place.  What Natasha was doing there.  Why she had been with Fine.  Why HYDRA was after her.  Why the government was after her.  _They’re after her.  She ran because they’re after her.  Clint probably stayed to let her escape, and she’s trying to run, trying to hide…_   She hadn’t betrayed them.  She wasn’t selling Steve to HYDRA.  HYDRA was hunting _her_.

Tony had come to the same realization.  He was as white as a ghost.  “Shit,” he whispered.  He turned blazing eyes to Sam.  “Does Steve know?  Is that why he went after her?”

Sam swallowed the pounding of his heart down, trying to think above his fear and shock and _guilt_.  “No,” he said, shaking his head.  “No, I don’t think so.  He doesn’t know.”

“Jesus.  We need to get a hold of him,” Tony said.  “Does he have his phone?”

“He has mine.”

“JARVIS?”

“I am already attempting to reach Captain Rogers, but the same intermittent interference that has been plaguing our communications network for the last few days is preventing me from maintaining a stable connection,” the AI grimly responded.  Even he seemed troubled and anxious.  “You should put more effort into ferretting out the last of these problems.”

“Go to hell, J.  I’ve been busy, and dropped calls haven’t been high on my list of problems!”

JARVIS didn’t seem put off by Tony’s excuses.  “I believe I have him, sir.”

A moment later, the sound of a phone ringing echoed through the room.  And a moment after that, Steve picked up.  “Tony?”

 _Thank God._ Tony stood taller.  “Steve, can you hear me?  Where are you?”

Relief was premature.  The sound of digital distortion was ear-piercing throughout the lab.  Sam winced, turning around like he could see the source of the trouble.  A garbled mess of Steve’s voice and high-pitched noises resounded.  Whatever he was saying was completely unintelligible.  “JARVIS, clean it up!” Stark demanded.

“I am trying, sir,” the AI said.

Sam couldn’t keep himself composed, not when Steve was in danger like this.  “Steve, it’s Sam.  Just listen to me.  There’s something bad coming after you and coming after Natasha.  You have to find her and get some place safe!  Do you hear me?”

For an endless moment, there was no answer.  Steve’s voice finally returned.  “What?  I can’t make–”  It went out.  Then it came back again.  “–some…  –breaking up–”

“Steve!” Tony yelled.  “Find Natasha and hole up somewhere safe and call us!  We’ll come get you!”  There was no answer.  “Steve?”

“–okay!  Can’t find–”  That was it.  The line went dead. 

“I lost him, sir,” JARVIS said.

“Goddamn it,” Tony snarled.  “Keep trying to get him back.  Somebody’s got to reach him and warn him about what’s coming.”

It was worse than that.  Sam felt that cold sweeping over him again, awful and insidious.  “These problems with your cell network…  They’re because of HYDRA hacking you back when we brought the USB drive from the _Lemurian Star_ here, aren’t they.”

“Probably,” Tony said, winded and at a loss.  He shared a flustered look with Bruce.  “I’ve been trying to clean out the subroutines since the virus made it into the Tower.  I thought I fucking _had_ it a week ago, but I guess not.  It’s a wiry little bastard, burying itself deeper every time I think I have a hold on it, and it really wasn’t doing anything, so I put it lower on the pile because we thought fucking HYDRA was gone!”

Sam didn’t care about that.  “If the communications network is infected, does that mean HYDRA can track your phones?”  Tony blanched.  “Is it possible?  Tony?”

Tony looked like he wanted to scream.  “Jesus.  Fuck!”

“What?” Thor demanded.  “What is it?  What does that mean?”

Sam balled his hands into fists and closed his eyes.  That meeting with Lukin and Malik…  _“Things are compromised in ways he can’t even fathom.”_   If HYDRA had its hands in Stark’s tech…  _Oh, my God._   What the hell did they just do?  They’d been played from the get-go.  Blind-sided.  _Again._   He could barely breathe.  “It means that if Steve finds Natasha and calls us…”

_It’ll lead HYDRA right to them._


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE:** Yeah, Steve's still in a dark place. Warnings for Captain America not being overly Captain America-like. There are a couple of references to _Agent Carter_ , too. And I'm still making stuff up as I need to. Enjoy! You all know what's coming next... ;-)

Cloud cover.  Thick and vast like the sky was one with the earth, and there was no end in sight.  This time he told himself it wasn’t real.  He _knew_ it wasn’t real.  But rational thought failed him, and he stood stock still and horrified as the fog rolled closer and closer until it was completely enveloping him again.

Steve turned around, staring into the mist, breathing heavily in barely restrained panic.  What did it take to escape this hell?  _What?_  His panted breaths were thunderous in the silence.  Frustration and fear left him aching, and he blinked away tears.  He didn’t want to believe it, but he was starting to fear there was no way out.  Which way could he go?  How could he free himself?

How could he find her?  _I just want to find her.  All I want.  Find her and go home…  Should never have left.  Never._

“Steve.”

Steve whirled.  His heart was pounding, terrified of who it was, of whatever demon had come for him.  But it wasn’t a monster.  Not at all.  “Peggy?”

Peggy was fire and beauty, the same as she’d been when he’d left her all those years ago before jumping on the plane that would take him to his death.  She had her hands on her hips, standing like she always had when she’d been displeased with something.  Her full red lips were pulled thin, not quite a frown but far from a smile.  She was worried about him.  “What are you doing here?”

He shuddered.  He couldn’t help it.  The shiver wracked over his body.  “I’m lost,” he admitted.

“Then check your compass.”

“My…”  His hand went to the pocket of his jeans.  Sure enough, inside was his compass, and he pulled it out.  He hadn’t looked at it in what felt to be forever, not since the mission to Crimea.  That seemed so long ago.  So much had happened since then.  _So much_.  He was wary, afraid even, sweeping his thumb over the silver cover.  “Peg, I–”

Peggy was closer now.  She slid her hands over his, her familiar hands that were young and slender but strong, and folded his fingers over the compass.  “It’s never led you astray before, has it?” she asked.  Her eyes were bright, knowing, the bridge between what she’d become and who she’d been when he’d loved her.  She smiled tenderly, raising his hands to her mouth and kissing his knuckles.  Then she pressed them to his chest.  “You don’t belong here.  You belong with her.”

“I know,” he whispered.

“So find her,” Peggy said.  “You’re hers now, and she needs you.”

She made it sound so simple, but it wasn’t.  “I don’t know how.”  It hurt to say that.  It hurt to feel it.

“I’ve never known you to be defeated,” she said, again not with anger or disappointment.  She swept her hand over his cheek, tender and loving.  “I’ve never known you to not be able to find your way.  And I’ve never known you to let them win.”

“Peggy…”

“ _Look._   Look and see the truth.”

She released him and stepped away.  Steve turned his gaze downward onto his compass, unfurling his fingers to reveal it on his palm.  When he looked up again, Peggy was white, withered, fading into the clouds.  Horrified, he reached for her, but she was already gone.

He stood still, his skin crawling and his heart heavy in his chest.  The fog encroached upon him, caressing him with eerie tendrils that wrapped around his body.  Like restraints.  It made his mind go places he didn’t want to go, back to the long, awful hours spent at the mercy of monsters.  He jerked, shrugging the mist away.  He was about to press the little latch on his compass and open it when a horrific scream rent the air.

_“Steve!”_

“Nat…”  He whirled, terror pumping through his veins.  His skin prickled with icy panic.  “Nat!”  Silence answered him.  Steve could hardly hear over the roar of his heart.  Now his gasping breaths were thunderous, his chest heaving and his body trembling in desperation.  “Natasha!”  Where was she?  _Where is she?_ “Natasha!  Where are you?  Natasha!”

Cackling laughter ripped over this world, echoing amidst the gray and black intent on swallowing him whole.  “Did you think you could have her, Captain?”  _Brushov._   “Did you think I would ever let her go?”

“Where is she?” Steve shouted.  He turned and turned, but there was nothing but the walls of clouds, dizzying and entrapping.  No one to fight.  Nowhere to go.  “Where is she?  Natasha!”

“She’s mine,” Brushov seethed, the voice so low and deep it rattled his heart.  His soul.  “She’s mine.”

Steve struggled to stay standing.  The vertigo was torturous.  The world pulsed, loud and furious, thrumming in time with his aching heart.  “You want to know what else, Captain?”  It was Pierce again.  His smooth, arrogant voice blasted over him.  “You had a chance to be with her.  To keep her from us.  And you threw it away.  You threw _her_ away.”

“No!”  His voice broke, and the next thing he knew, he was hitting the ground on his knees.  Hard.  The impact shook his bones, and he curled forward, barely getting his hands in front of him enough to protect his face.  “No, I didn’t…  I don’t–”

“You left her.  And we took her.”

Now he heard a lower laugh.  Malignant and arrogant.  The voice from the hell of the war.  “When will you understand, Captain?  Sergeant Barnes…  Black Widow.”  The Red Skull sneered.  “You cannot save them.”  There was screaming in the distance again.  _Natasha._   “And the best weapons are those against which you are not willing to fight.  The things you cannot sacrifice.”

Natasha screamed again, loud and full of pain.  God, they were hurting her…  “Please, don’t do this to her,” he begged.  The cry rent his heart.  Tears spilled from his eyes, and he looked up.  He’d plead with them for her.  He’d do _anything_ to save her.  There was nothing he wouldn’t sacrifice.  They didn’t understand that.  “Please.  Take me.  Hurt me.  I don’t care.  I’ll be your weapon.  Fight your war.  Anything you want.  Just please don’t hurt her.  _Please._ ”

“Really, Cap?”  Just like that, the fog enveloping him turned into substance and form.  Strong arms around him.  Hands like iron around his arms, pushing him back down.  He didn’t fight.  Truly he’d succumb without a fight if it would spare Natasha, even if he was terrified.  And he was.  Rumlow’s breath was hot and foul on his cheek.  “I kept telling you.  She gets in your head and gets in your heart and twists you around until you’re hers.  She takes you and makes you feel like you’d sell the world for her.  But you didn’t listen.  And here you are, selling yourself.”  The man grunted out an anticipatory chuckle.  “That’s fine with me.  I wouldn’t mind owning Captain America.  We’ve got some unfinished business, you and I.”

Steve stiffened.  On his other side, Clint held tight.  “I tried to save her too, you know.  It’s not worth it.  There’s no way.  You’re just too stupid to see that.  Fucking stupid kid.”  A growl picked its way up Steve’s throat, and suddenly the urge to fight jolted through him.  “You can’t find her.”

“You want us to take you back?” Rumlow asked.  He pressed a forearm to the back of Steve’s neck and shoved him down.  “You think they want you?  You got nothing to give them.  They already have you.”

Steve looked up, as difficult as it was.  A shadow was looming over him.  “No,” he groaned.  It was the Winter Soldier, silver arm darkly gleaming in the fading light, eyes rimmed in kohl.  They weren’t Bucky’s eyes, though.  They were blue.  _His_ eyes.  His face.  “No!”  _This isn’t real.  You know it’s not real!_

The Red Skull laughed again, a bloody scowl in the fog.  “Just a kid from Brooklyn, yes?”  Steve gritted his teeth, letting that timid flame of anger grow and grow until it was a raging inferno in his heart.  “Nothing and no one special.  Then you’re of no value to us.  You wish to trade yourself for her?  We don’t need you.”

“Get off me,” he hissed, tensing his muscles.  Strength and power pulsed over him, a beat after a beat after a beat.

“You cannot find her, Captain!” Brushov yelled.  “She’s mine!”

 _“Get off of me!”_   He stood, pushing up with all of his might, and Rumlow and Barton were sent flying into the clouds.  The Winter Soldier made to grab him, but he was faster, snatching the metal wrist and driving the assassin down with a fist to his face.   Steve bore down on him, a knee to the other man’s back and that arm twisted painfully in his grip until the metal was crushed under his hand.

When the Soldier looked back at him, it was Bucky again.  Bucky’s gray eyes, in pain and fear but so relieved.  “Go,” he ordered.  _“Run.”_

Steve let him loose, pivoting and rising to his full height.  Rumlow was coming after him, hate and hunger in his eyes, but Steve lowered himself and charged into him with his shoulder.  He plowed Rumlow down with everything he had and tackled him.  Rumlow hit the ground beneath him and vanished, exploded into misty air, into _nothingness_ , and Steve clambered to his feet.  Clint was gone.  Bucky was gone.

“Where do you think you’re going, Captain?”  It was Pierce again.  “You think you can run?  Fight us?  Find your way out of here?  Find her?”  The sound of that voice nearly sent shivers down Steve’s back, but he was stronger now, and he wasn’t going to be weak ever again.  Not when Natasha needed him.  “You can’t.”

“I can,” Steve said.  His own voice rose in anger, in determination.  “You hear me?  I can!  Because she’s _mine_.”  The clouds retreated from him almost as if they were afraid of that, repelled by the strength of his words.  By their power.  These monsters didn’t have control over him.  He didn’t need to beg.  He needed to _fight_.  “I can find her, because she’s mine, and I’m hers, and you’re not taking _either_ of us!”

Silence.

Only the beating of his heart and the rush of air in and out of his lungs.  Steve turned around again, scanning the clouds, searching.  He was alone.

Not alone.

Natasha was still calling for him.  Screaming for him.  He could hardly hear her.  She was so far away, but the pain and fear – the desperation for _him_ – was clear.  “Nat!  I’m coming!”  He spun, running in the direction in which he thought he heard her.  The clouds parted to reveal only more of the same, that plane of gray stretching infinitely around him.  “Nat!  _Nat!_ ”  There was nothing.  Just the damn fog, blinding him.  Holding him back, even if he’d escaped.  The sound of her crying was a brutal torment, maybe the worst he’d ever endured, and it took all of his strength to stay calm and hold that consuming sense of panic at bay.  “Please, love, tell me where you are…”  His breathy words weren’t answered.  “Tell me how to find you.”

 _“I’ve never known you to not be able to find your way.”_ He stopped and looked down.  His compass was still clenched in his hand.  _“Look and see the truth.”_   He held his breath, pressing his thumb into the little release.  The compass flipped open – _Natasha’s eyes stared at him from the picture inside_ – and he saw–

Steve gasped a wrangled cry and lurched forward.  The clouds were gone.  _Everything_ was gone, and he was alone in the driver’s seat of his rental car.  “Damn it,” he moaned, leaning down to rest his aching head on the steering wheel.  He couldn’t catch his breath.  He couldn’t stop his heart from pounding against his ribs.  He felt sick.  He wasn’t used to that; just a few short years of health and vitality had made him forget what it was like to be weak and dizzy and burdened like this.

But he wasn’t weak or burdened.  He lifted his gaze, blinking away the tears, and saw muscles beneath the arms of his coat and felt heat in his chest and knew the strength in his body.  Outside the first light of dawn was turning the sky purple.  Raindrops splattered on the windshield.  He sucked in a deep breath and let it go, closing his eyes once more and trying to center himself as traffic roared on the highway outside.  As much as it hurt, he knew he had to keep looking.  As tired as he was, he had to keep fighting.  That was how he would find her.  _Keep going_.

He wiped his eyes, turned the car on, and drove.

* * *

Volgograd had turned out to be something of a bust.  Steve had gone there first.  He knew from Natasha and from what they’d learned during the mission in Crimea that the city had been something of a base of operations for Brushov.  He’d figured (hoped, really) that Natasha might go there, that perhaps she had old contacts or allies there she might use.  The safety of familiar ground, where Black Widow likely still possessed quite a bit of influence, might have drawn her back.  If it had, though, there hadn’t been much sign of it.  He’d spent all of yesterday and the day before sneaking around, heading to the areas of the city he knew from SHIELD intel were dangerous.  Maybe it hadn’t been the smartest maneuver, but he wasn’t going to find information about deadly assassins and spies at the American consulate.  He’d slipped inside seedy bars, trying to blend in (that had been fairly laughable given his size and how, as Tony often put it, he walked and talked like an all-American boy, but he’d managed it).  He’d listened in, tried poking into a conversation here and there.  Criminals were surprisingly loose-lipped, and the thieves and hired hit men and whatever other disreputable thugs populating these haunted chatted like a bunch of busy-bodies.  It wasn’t so easy trying to ask about Natasha while not really asking about her; flat-out inquiring as to what these bastards had heard would be far too much of a tell.  But his time in SHIELD (and his time spent watching Natasha work a suspect or talk to a witness or manipulate a connection) had taught him a few things about getting information without being overt about it, and he’d managed to find out that Black Widow had returned to Moscow.

What he _hadn’t_ been able to determine was who that Black Widow was.  Natasha?  Yelena Belova?  Were they separate women?  He realized a few frustrating hours into this endeavor that these thugs didn’t know, either.  Apparently there was a price on Black Widow’s head.  A huge one.  A dozen different names were responsible for it (the most commonly mentioned was Brushov, but that couldn’t be and the fact these animals kept harping on it made Steve doubt _everything_ they were saying).  The men were treating it like some unattainable treasure, laughing it off because there was no way to find Black Widow, let alone catch her.  Not the Black Widow that worked for SHIELD.  Not the one that worked for the Red Room.  Not Belova.  Not Romanoff.  She was untraceable, unfindable.  A shadow.

That hadn’t done much to bolster his resolve.  He’d been about ready to throw in the towel, increasingly uncomfortable amidst so much evil, when a call from an old man buried in the dark corner of one of the bars stopped him as he’d literally had one foot out the door.  The guy was scarred, mangled, and hideous, but he’d offered up information (in return for payment, of course, and Steve had reluctantly forked over the remains of the money he had).  Behind a pall of disgusting cigar smoke, the man had told him about a place in Moscow, an old government building, that had ties to Black Widow’s past.  He’d heard that there’d been some unusual activity there of late as well after years of being abandoned.  He’d also told Steve that it would be wise of him to quit this craziness.  Going after Black Widow was too dangerous.  She killed men like him.  She crushed them down to nothing, _destroyed_ them.  It was as if the old man had seen through his dirty clothes and unshaven face and impeccable Russian speech and _known_ who he was.  Maybe not that he was Captain America exactly, but certainly that he didn’t belong in this dark world.  And certainly what Natasha had done to him.  Maybe Steve’s expression had somehow betrayed him.  He didn’t know.  Lies.  The bullet in his chest.  The damage to his heart.  The old man had smirked, amused, and warned him that only a fool hunted something he couldn’t understand and couldn’t possibly cage.  When Steve hadn’t acknowledged that, he had laughed in his face, taken his money, and told him to get lost.

He’d driven through the night to get to Moscow, stopping briefly when exhaustion had worn him down.  Now he was trying to stay focused, to not think too deeply about anything lest he lose his nerve or be consumed by his fears and doubts.  That call he’d received from Sam and Tony two days ago had confirmed a great deal of what he’d feared: something was after Natasha.  He didn’t know what and he didn’t know why.  HYDRA?  Bounty hunters?  That made sense, given what he’d learned in Volgograd.  Natasha had something somebody somewhere wanted very badly.  He prayed it wasn’t his blood (or any other part of him), but there was no way to know.  Sam was right; what had happened in New York did sound like some sort of hand-off gone wrong.  He didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to consider what had driven her into betraying him, or that all of this had been some sort of lie and she’d been using him and manipulating him from the beginning.  Hadn’t their relationship been founded on that?  Honestly, she’d seduced him in Crimea and lied to him not twelve hours later.  _She didn’t use you.  She loves you.  You want to learn the truth?  You know it already._ Whatever she was doing, he needed to find her, maybe stop her…  _No.  She didn’t do what you think she did.  And you know it already!_ He was so lost and confused, but he couldn’t make himself doubt her anymore.  He didn’t know why.  He just couldn’t.  It hurt too much.

Regardless, he hadn’t been able to hear much else Sam and Tony had tried to tell him; the call had been so distorted their words had been all but unintelligible, but he’d made out that Tony wanted him to find Natasha, get some place safe, and call them for extraction.  That was what he was going to do.  He couldn’t think much beyond that, couldn’t think about the answers he wanted, Natasha’s face that he pictured immediately and unwittingly every time he closed his eyes, her screams that haunted his dreams…  He couldn’t think about any of that.  He had a mission, and he was going to see it through.  _Find her.  Get someplace safe.  Call for help._   Of course even if he could find her, and even if he could take her someplace (was there any place safe?), calling the rest of the Avengers seemed out of the question.  Whatever problem Sam had been having with his phone was persisting.  Steve had tried to call New York a couple of times now, and every attempt with met with the phone blaring “NETWORK ERROR” in bright red letters.  He was alone out here and cut off from the others.  _Been in worse spots before._   And he had been.  He’d been separated from and out of communication with the Commandos quite a few times during the war, sometimes intentionally and sometimes not, with HYDRA and Nazis between him and salvation.  He’d been in tough scrapes as a SHIELD agent.  And the last six months had been a challenge, to say the least.  However, he’d gotten through all of that.  He’d fought his way back, powered through resistance and obstacles, reached safety…  He could do this.

It was late afternoon by the time he reached his destination.  The address the old man had given him was on the north side of Moscow in an older area of the city.  Long shadows stretched from lonely, dark buildings.  He parked on the street some distance away and got out of the car, surreptitiously checking the handgun tucked back in his belt and the other in the shoulder harness under his coat.  Then he closed the door.  It was so quiet here, this somewhat residential area with rundown buildings and overgrown yards.  Steve didn’t like the look of it.  He didn’t let that stop him, however, checking the numbers on the houses and buildings until he came to the one the old man had mentioned.

“Damn,” he whispered.  It was nothing but an empty lot.  He tried not to look suspicious as he checked the buildings adjacent to it, but his mind was in such a tumult of angry and worried thought that he didn’t make much of an effort to hide his quick and agitated steps.  This _was_ the place.  The sparse lot was right where the building should have been if the numbers were any indication.  There was garbage and refuse in the grassy area, but that was it.  No government building.  Nothing.  That son of a bitch had taken him for a ride!

Angry and frustrated, he could do nothing for a few minutes other than darkly stare at the fruits of his labor.  There was a woman coming down the street, bags rattling.  He unclenched his jaw and stepped aside to let her pass.  _“Izvinite,”_ he said.  _“Byl li zdaniye zdes’?”_

She looked at him suspiciously, but she answered.  _“Da, no eto byla snesena let nazad.”_

Steve tried to hold onto his temper.  _“Bylo li eto pereyekhal?”_

She curtly shook her head.  _“Ya ne znayu. Ostav’ menya v pokoye.”_   She continued on her way, pausing only once to glare at him over her shoulder.

“Friendly,” Steve muttered.  He sighed, wondering what to do now.  This was nothing useful at all, and he’d wasted a whole day driving here.  He didn’t know what bothered him more, the fact that he’d fallen into this trap or the fact that he had _no_ _idea_ where to go now.  He stood, staring at the empty lot and wanting so badly to just have _something_ go right.  After spending a month searching for Bucky and finding useless clue after false lead after dead end, his patience, normally boundless, was pretty much at its end.  His exhaustion was bad enough, but the emotional toll all of this was taking on him…  That shred of composure he’d managed to reclaim right before Sam had left was wearing extremely thin now.

He looked left.  There was a house there, or at least it looked like a house.  It was huge, almost like a mansion, but it was dark and mostly boarded up.  To the right there was a church, an extremely old one by the looks of it.  It was built of dark stones, its spires typical of the Russian Orthodox style and made of tired gold that was dimly shining in the dying daylight.  The building looked as neglected as most of the others on this block, somewhat in disrepair and in need of a good carpenter, but there were lights on inside and the wrought-iron gate around its perimeter was unlocked.  Steve stared at it for a moment before deciding to go closer.  Maybe there might be someone inside who could answer some questions at least.  It sure looked like that guy in Moscow had just swindled him out of his last hundred dollars, but maybe…  It was worth investigating.

The sound of his boots on the sidewalk was incredibly loud in the silence.  The fine hairs on the back of Steve’s neck prickled and not from the cold wind brushing over him.  Feeling like he was being watched, he checked over his shoulder only to find he was still alone on this dark street.  Annoyed and unsettled, he wondered when it was that he would stop ignoring this feeling of imminent bad things happening and do the smart thing and run.  _Not today apparently._   He stepped through the open gate and past the weathered statues of religious icons in the yard.  The brush was thick and needed thorough pruning, dried to a moldy yellow and choking the stone figures.  Steve ignored the statues’ eyes tracking him as he climbed the handful of steps to the wooden doors.  He pulled them open and went inside.

The interior was nicer than he’d anticipated.  It was a bit chilly, drafty, but warmly lit.  There were candles in sconces and in light fixtures along the vestibule.  Ahead were empty seats along the walls made rich, dark wood that seemed to ache for lacquer.  The church was very finely decorated with golden and elaborate but faded imagery.  It looked a tad unusual to Steve who’d been born and raised Catholic.  However, it wasn’t unwelcoming, even though there was, in fact, no one there.  _“Zdravstvuyte?”_ he called.  It was so empty that his voice echoed.  There was no answer.  He tried again, taking a few tentative steps deeper.  He saw now that there was dust all over, not so much to suggest the place wasn’t used but enough to reinforce the idea that it wasn’t well kept.  He felt a bit like he was trespassing, the fact that he was armed inside a holy place notwithstanding.  He wandered deeper into a round area, where he stopped and turned slowly to look up into the high, arched ceiling.  The paintings there were striking, beautiful even though they were shadowy and a little dirty.  _“Zdravstvuyte?  Yest’ zdes’ kto-nibud’?”_   Again, no one responded.  _Somebody_ had to have been here recently.  The candles were all lit.  Steve exhaled slowly, tensely, not knowing what to make of any of this but becoming increasingly certain something wasn’t right.

There was a little hallway in the back of this chamber, so he went to that.  He passed some empty places, conference rooms and offices, before reaching another narrower corridor.  There were numerous paintings on the walls that depicted famous Christian scenes and what he assumed were Russian saints.  The hallway grew darker as he went further along it.  At its end were a few candles on tall, golden holders, burning low as if they’d been lit for a while.  A chill tickled the small of Steve’s back, and he glanced over his shoulder again.  Still, there was nobody.  He turned back and crept down the corridor.  He reached the candles and found himself at a stone wall.  Why have the candles here?  What was this place?  He grabbed one of the candles and lifted it to see above where the shadows were thicker.

Something was written up there in Cyrillic.  “I am the alpha and omega,” he whispered, “the beginning and the end.”  That was from the Book of Revelation.  But what was it doing inscribed on a brick at the end of this hallway?  Steve stepped closer, reaching out a hand to touch the block, when his feet thudded against something that sounded distinctly _not_ like the tile floor made up the rest of the hallway.  Steve looked down.  Sure enough, the floor was wooden where he stood.  He backed up and lowered the light.  It was wooden because it was a door.

Steve drew a shorter breath in surprise.  He looked behind him again, expecting to be jumped or surrounded or at least discovered at any moment, but there was _still_ no one there.  It was eerily quiet.  He set the candle back down before sliding his fingers along the seam where the door met the rest of the floor.  He found the latch to release it and pulled it open.  There was a ladder down into darkness.

 _Enough secret doors and secret passages and…  Don’t go down there._   Natasha wouldn’t be down there, would she?  It was crazy, and he doubted it.  But he’d come this far.  Grabbing the candle again, he climbed down the ladder.  His boots hit the ground below.  It was some kind of tunnel, dark and loaded with cobwebs and dirt.  Whatever it was, it didn’t seem to be part of the church.  Steve stood there a moment, staring down the passageway and wondering how smart it would be to go forward.  _Considering all the other times we’ve wandered into these sorts of things and ended up in trouble…  Not very._   But he did.  He drew his gun from his shoulder harness and held the candle before him, spreading the paltry bubble of illumination as far ahead of him as possible.  The tunnel was cramped and claustrophobic but surprisingly short.  At its termination, he found himself in a room literally teeming with file cabinets.

He couldn’t quite believe his eyes.  What the hell was this place?  Vaguely he came to the realization, given the way he’d walked and where that trap door was, that he was under that abandoned lot.  That probably meant this was the basement of whatever government building had been there.  He shone the light along the wall and found a switch.  Hesitating a moment, he turned it on.  Fluorescent bulbs buzzed and winked to life overhead, washing the area in bleached illumination.  Steve blew out the candle and set it atop one of the dark green, metallic cabinets.  There were dozens of them in neat rows, each four drawers tall.  If they all contained records of some sort, then there were thousands of files here.

Steve wandered through the rows, listening for any sign of someone following him, and when he was satisfied he was alone, he put his gun away.  He peered at the file cabinet closest to him.  There was something written on the front of it.  He rubbed his thumb over the label to clear the dust away.  There were numbers there.  “9 30 28”.  He looked at the next cabinet.  “10 15 30”.  He shook his head, moving down the line.  The first two numerals seemed to be fairly random, but the last one was increasing one or two at a time.  Then he realized they were dates.

He pulled open one of the drawers and pulled out a folder from inside.  This one was from April 1933.  The pages were ancient, faded so badly that the writing on them was barely legible.  Still, he was able to figure out enough of it.  It was information on a girl named Ekaterina Agapov.  Eight years old.  Healthy.  There were pictures, pictures of a child…  Steve swallowed his horror.  She was handcuffed to a bed, sleeping.  He saw page after page of notes.  Doctor’s notes.  Researcher’s notes.  Trainer’s notes.  All pertaining to…  “Oh, God,” he whispered.

This was the Red Room, or at least its archives.  And the archives went back decades.  Before World War II.  Before World War I, even.  It predated America’s super soldier program, the Red Skull, Doctor Erskine…  Far beyond Brushov.  Maybe Brushov had been the last custodian of the program, but the goals, the violence and experimentation and brainwashing…  It was disturbing.  Evil men in Russia had been trying to build super soldiers, spies, and assassins for a hundred years, and Steve was standing in the history of that madness.

He put the folder back in the drawer and closed it.  Natasha was twenty-nine, so she’d been born in 1984.  He rushed through the aisles between the cabinets, his mind racing.  She’d told him Brushov took her off the streets of Stalingrad where she’d been a pick-pocket and a thief.  She’d had to have been old enough to have managed to be exceptional because Brushov had selected her because of her skill.  So she’d been seven?  Eight?  Nine?  He found the early 1990s and frantically pulled open drawers.  The folders were labeled well enough.  He rifled through him, reading quickly.  No Belova.  No Romanova.  He pulled one out that was unlabeled and opened it.  The girl’s name was unknown.  She’d died during treatments with a serum.  Natasha had mentioned something about that, that Brushov had injected the Red Room participants (if they could be called such a thing) with drugs to increase their agility, strength, and stamina.  This girl hadn’t survived them.  The medical examiner’s report was there along with some fairly gruesome images of the autopsy that he didn’t examine too closely.  One of the doctors had written something in the margin.  _“Beta-462 is so far from the original state that we can no longer replicate it or purify it.  Recommend termination of further testing.”_

 _The original state…  The original serum._   Steve put the folder back and grabbed another.  Another dead girl.  This serum they had been using at the time was killing their subjects, which was the same thing that had happened with the serum they’d tested during Project: Red Guardian.  There were more notes.  _“I strongly advocate for termination of the program.  It’s impossible to extract anything from the alpha serum.  This should have been realized decades ago.”_

The alpha serum.  That lab in Zürich had labeled his blood samples like that.  The alpha serum was Erskine’s serum.  The serum in his body.  Steve felt his blood go cold.  The Red Room had had samples going back…  “Decades ago.”  He thought back to that diary of Zola’s he and Sam had found in Zürich.  That had been dated 1971.  He found those file cabinets in short order and started searching.  Sure enough, there had been similar levels of frustration in the research staff over the original Red Guardian project.  _“Our experiments have failed.  We cannot manufacture a serum without a successful sample to use as a basis.  As much as I despise the Nazi bastards, Zola’s proposition interests me.  They say it cannot be done, but they underestimate my ambitions.  This has been our goal for decades and we will not give up.”_   Steve shook his head.  Zola had traded samples of the serum for the means to brainwash Bucky.  The Soviets had needed those samples after Brushov’s project to create a super soldier had failed.  But where the hell had they gotten samples of Erskine’s serum?  Assuming it _was_ Erskine’s serum.  _It has to be.  The alpha serum._   It couldn’t have been from him.  He’d been in the ice.  The Red Skull somehow?  HYDRA had had samples of that.  _No, not the Red Skull._

_Bucky._

Steve couldn’t believe it.  Bucky had been given some version of the original serum.  A damaged version, but something from Erskine’s work.  And the Russians had taken that and run with it.

He looked further ahead.  The girls stopped dying.  The Red Room scientists must have gotten the alpha serum, started over with their beta project or stabilized what they’d had.  And for decades, they’d created Red Room assassins, but only with a fraction of the power of the original super soldier serum.  It seemed like whatever process they were using to extract the serum was weakening it, and the more they struggled to enhance it and the further they got from the original, the more poisonous it became.  Steve went back to the cabinets from the early 1990s, desperately searching for Natasha’s file.  Had she received this version of the serum?  She’d told him she had undergone treatments, but maybe that had been with something else because whatever derivative the Russians had been using had pretty effectively killed over 90% of the Red Room participants, if these records were any indication.  He looked and looked, but there was no sign of her file.

Feeling increasingly rattled and disgusted and frustrated, Steve glanced around.  He’d been down here for a while.  Someone was going to find him.  All he’d been able to glean from these later files was that Red Room had effectively been shut down some time right before the turn of the century.  Funding had dried up.  Revolution had fractured alliances.  Later there were files for Project: Red Guardian, and he recognized those as the same files that had been given to SHIELD by Victor Petrovich as a lure to get Fury to send him to Crimea.  The dead volunteers numbered in the dozens.  These were Brushov’s experiments and his alone.  But there was nothing beyond that.  No information on Lukin, if he was involved, or Brushov or _anyone_ else.  It couldn’t be a coincidence that they were trying to get his blood now.  It couldn’t be.  They wanted it for this!

 _But why now?  Because SHIELD fell and they can get at it now?  And why are they hunting Natasha for my blood?  They already had it.  Tons of it.  And Brushov said he wasn’t interested in Erskine’s serum._   Something didn’t fit.  His eyes fell on a lone file cabinet on the other side of the room.  It was in a shadowy corner, set apart from all the others.  Closing the last drawer, he went to it.  There was no date on the front.  Rather, it simply said: “ACTIVE”.

 _This is it_.  He pulled the top drawer open.  There were only a few files, thick and heavy, and they hadn’t been updated recently, at least not in the last six months.  Alexei Shostakov.  Somebody named Arkady Rossovich _(who the hell is that?)_.  A couple of other names he didn’t recognize.  He didn’t look further because there it was.  Natalia Romanova.  Steve’s heart jumped in relief and excitement, and he grabbed the folder and pulled it free.

_“Ey! Kto-to zdes’?”_

Steve nearly jumped in surprise.  He closed the drawer and quickly tucked the folder behind him.  _“Da.”_

A man appeared on the other side of the room, through a door Steve hadn’t noticed until now.  He was younger, with long hair drawn back into a pony tail and an unshaven face.  He stared at Steve, not exactly trusting but not with violence in his eyes either.  _“Chto ty delayesh’?”_

He quickly managed a lie.  _“Nachalo chto-to dlya bossa_.”

It was risky.  However, the gamble paid off.  The man’s face relaxed a bit from his suspicious glare, and he nodded, hefting his gun over his shoulder.  _“Davay. Oni nachinayut.”_

Steve swallowed down his dismay, drew a deep breath, and followed the man out.

* * *

If that tower in Prague had been a nest of HYDRA, this was a proverbial _army_.

Steve couldn’t stop wondering what he’d gotten himself into.  Right on the tails of that slightly panicked thought was _how the hell am I going to get out of this?_

That house next the lot was apparently not as abandoned as it looked.  It was mostly hollowed out, and he, as well as nearly a hundred other guys, stood in a massive foyer.  Once it had been beautiful, with parquet floors and marble staircases and an ornate chandelier that hung from an arched ceiling.  Now it was scuffed and filthy, covered in grime with its carpets eaten through and its finery marred by exposure.  Something told him the men in whose company he’d inexplicably found himself didn’t particularly care.  These were thugs, the same sort with whom he’d had to consort in Moscow to get information.  Hired guns.  Killers and thieves and people willing to take any job to make money.  They were all armed, even the ones not bold (or stupid enough) to show it.  Steve saw guns tucked into belts and holsters, rifles and shotguns slung over shoulders, knives in sheaths.  At least that made him feel more comfortable about being armed as well, which was just as well because he’d needed to stealthily slide Natasha’s file where one of the Glocks had been tucked against his back underneath his shirt and jacket.  He put the displaced gun on the other side of his shoulder harness, hoping he looked as malignant and dangerous as the men packed tightly around him.  “ _You’re a terrible liar, Rogers.”_   How many times had Natasha told him that?  She’d laughed, made light of it, teased him with a coy smile on her face, but it was true.  He was a terrible liar.  He didn’t know if he could pull this off.

It didn’t seem like he had much of a choice.  There was no way he could escape right now, not with dozens of feet and nearly fifty men between him and the front doors of this place.  He was going to have to ride this out, stay quiet and inconspicuous and pray no one noticed him.  He didn’t know what was going on, but hopefully he could fake it until he could find a chance to slip away.  Hopefully.  He looked dirty and scruffy enough to fit in, at least.  He’d donned a stoic (but what he thought was a convincingly threatening) expression as he stood there, listening to those around him grumble in impatience.  Whatever they’d been summoned here to do, they weren’t keen on waiting too much longer to do it.  With this many violent criminals all crammed together in close quarters, the tension was thick.  He tried to look around without seeming interested, wanting to get some idea of who was there at least.  He recognized a few faces from SHIELD’s most wanted lists but nobody that really disturbed him.  There were a couple of members of Batroc’s crew present; he didn’t think they would recognize him since it had been dark when he’d infiltrated the _Lemurian Star_ and he’d effectively knocked most of the pirates out before they’d known what had hit them.

But his breath caught in his throat when he saw Ramirez.  And Blackburn.  And Sam Sircio.  _The STRIKE Team_.  He looked away sharply, dropping his gaze to his feet.  Terror flooded up from his core before he could stop it, a cold and cruel automatic reaction, and clenching his abdominal muscles was all he could do to not double over at the sudden pain in his chest.  A hundred horrible memories pushed at his control all at once, memories of being tortured at their hands, punches and kicks and laughter as he was insulted and left to bleed at their feet…  _No._   He couldn’t succumb that here.  He swallowed the bile burning his throat, blinked the tears back from his eyes, and forced the panic attack down. 

“What’s your deal?”

“What?” he gasped, turning and almost reeling.

A wiry man, almost bald with a significant afternoon shadow clinging to his thin face, was standing next to him and watching him quizzically.  “Don’t recognize you, and I know everybody,” he said in heavily accented English.  He sounded Russian.  “And you don’t seem the type for this.  Too… wholesome.”

Steve gathered himself a lot faster than he thought he could.  “What the hell’s it to you?” he snapped.

The man shrugged, clearly not interested in making an issue of it probably because Steve had at least a hundred pounds of sheer muscle mass on him.  “It’s nothing to me, but it might be something to someone else.”

Steve turned his eyes forward, to the staircase ahead where he kept expecting someone would descend from on high to tell them all what they were doing here.  “I’m here for the money.”  That was fairly risky gamble.  If there was no money, he’d pretty well given himself away.

But there was, of course.  “Aren’t we all,” the man said.  “You stick out like a sore thumb, boy.  And you’re American.”

 _So much for blending in._   Maybe that was alright.  If some of the STRIKE Team was here, he could justify his presence.  “Ex-SHIELD,” he supplied.  Natasha had always told him the most convincing lies were the ones with some truth to them.

The man quirked an amused smile.  “Another rat jumping off the sinking ship.”

“Something like that,” Steve muttered.  “What else am I supposed to do?”

His companion seemed as though he wanted to ask more, but there was a ruckus at the top of the stairs.  Steve looked up to see a man coming down dressed rather outrageously.  He wore a skin-tight combat suit, either very dark purple or black with plated armor over the breast, shoulders, and thighs.  He had shaggy blond hair.  He was older but still in his prime, and he was obviously a well-trained combatant if his muscular build and confident stature were any indication.  The hilt of a long sword poked over his shoulder.  That was so surprising that Steve had to steel his features to keep it from his face.  Who was this?  _How many more are going to come out of the woodwork?_

The men quieted.  The strange swordsman stood in front of them on a lower landing of the once ornate staircase, flanked by a few soldiers bearing machine guns.  He smiled something of a charming smile, but it felt forced.  “You are all here to answer the call to arms.  This is not a binding contract; leave now if you want.  If you’re too weak to be the best.  But if you stay and take this job, we expect your loyalty until the work is complete.”  He had something of a strange accent.  Definitely American.  Midwest, maybe?  But not that entirely.  He was speaking English, which seemed odd.  And he seemed… strained.  Like what he was saying was rehearsed rather than natural.  “A new world order is coming.  SHIELD has fallen.  HYDRA has risen.  The world has seen now that enemies they thought were defeated long ago have actually been in power all along.  And while the Avengers scramble to put out the fires left by their former allies’ destruction, we will swoop in from the smoke.  We’ll cut them down.  I know many of you have been… _frustrated_ by SHIELD’s involvement in your own work.  The infamous Black Widow.”  The man’s eyes flashed, and he practically spat the next thing he said.  “Hawkeye.”  Again, that weird tone to his voice.  Was it angry?  Bitter?  Steve couldn’t tell, but a cold wave of nausea went over him when a hoot of appreciation rolled over the group.  “And Captain America.  HYDRA will finally get its revenge upon him.  The wrath of our retribution will be devastating.”  That peel of satisfaction turned into a snarled cheer.  Steve tried not to stiffen, and he couldn’t manage to shout alongside the thugs surrounding him.  _Holy hell.  Who are these people?_   It was becoming increasingly obvious that HYDRA wasn’t just HYDRA.  HYDRA had factions.  These nightmares against which they’d been fighting…  They were all interconnected.  HYDRA had ties to the Red Room.  The Red Room had ties to HYDRA.  And SHIELD had had ties to _everything_.

_Cut off one head, and two more shall take its place._

The man on the landing raised his hands to quiet the crowd.  “I’ve been summoned here to tell you that you will be the first of the new Red Army.  Those of the past…  They haven’t succeeded.  Their creators?  Limited aspirations and limited understanding.  This Red Army won’t serve Mother Russia.  It won’t serve any nation because in the future, there are no flags.  No, _this_ Red Army will serve only chaos.  Insanity.  And it will be stronger than any army on this planet.”  That was what that man in Prague had said to Lukin, about Pierce’s desire for order when anarchy was the true course.  _What Red Army?_   Could there be such a thing?  There had been dozens upon dozens of thugs and soldiers involved in this so far, but not enough to constitute a force actually capable of contending with the United States armed services, let alone those of its allies.  And wouldn’t SHIELD have…  _SHIELD didn’t know a damn thing._   Now the man genuinely smiled.  “The world will become a true snake pit.  I know you all appreciate that.  Sowing dissension is what we enjoy, the true mark of power.  Doing what you need to to make sure _you_ come out on top.  It’s a dog eat dog world, and those who want to stand for justice?  We’re going to overrun them like a stampede.  That’s the only reason I’m here.  To _win._ ”

Those assembled nodded and murmured their assent.  The swordsman nodded, but now it was cold and calculating again.  “Your task is simple.  The ships leave from Kaliningrad in two days.  Board them.  Guard the shipment with your lives.  If all goes according to plan, you’ll make berth in New York City, and from there, you’ll receive instructions from contacts in America.  Do this job well, and you’ll be paid.  More than that, though, when the time comes, you’ll find yourself standing on the right side of the epic battle.  And to the victor go the spoils.”  The men looked feral at that, excited and eager.  The swordsman was still so cold, seemingly heartless really, but his eyes glimmered with outright lust.  “When this is over, there isn’t going to be a government capable of standing up to us.  America falls first.  Europe next.  The rest will follow.  And the Avengers?  They’ll be so busy fighting to save themselves that they’ll have no hope of saving the world.  We’ll get our vengeance upon them.  They will _all fall._ ”  The smile turned arrogant and cruel.  Satisfied.  “The age of heroes is over.  Now go.”

The men looked amongst each other, like they were trying to gauge their reactions off of the mob’s mentality.  They began to disperse.  Steve stayed still, trying not to run even though every ounce of self-preservation was screaming that he do so.  He spent a moment analyzing the swordsman while he waited for those behind him to clear out, a moment that was not entirely fruitless.  He still had no idea who this guy was, but whoever he was, he was extremely dangerous.  Another nameless, faceless evil.

When the way was clear, he turned.  _Just slip out.  Blend in with the crowd._   He did that, not making eye contact with anyone but not turning his gaze away, either.  Just another thug in HYDRA’s endless war on humanity.  He slipped out the door, sidestepping men stopping to actually chat with other, avoiding those that looked particularly dangerous (or itching for an altercation).  _Get back to the car.  Get the hell out of here._

He wandered into the shadows.  Night was almost there now, and the air was chilly with a brisk wind that smelled like autumn rain.  Steve headed down the street away from his car, deciding that once he was sure he wasn’t being followed, he’d double back.  His mind was moving much faster than he was.  This was horrific confirmation of what they’d heard in Prague.  HYDRA – or the Red Room – was making some sort of massive move.  Those ships were probably carrying the poison that American guy in Prague had mentioned sneaking into the United States.  Some sort of biological weapon?  Chemical warfare?  Because SHIELD had been compromised, the possibilities were frankly endless and fairly disturbing.  He had to get a hold of Tony and warn them.  He had to–

“Well, well, well.”  The voice made Steve stop cold.  He gritted his teeth, clenching his hands into fists in the pockets of his coat.  _Damn it._ He knew that voice.  He turned and saw Ramirez behind him.  And Blackburn.  And Sircio.  A few others, big, brutish men, with them.  And that wiry bastard who’d talked to him back there.  _Goddamn it!_   Ramirez smiled.  “Always knew you had guts, Rogers, but this?  This is fucking _bold_.”

“Did you honestly think Captain America would escape notice in the stronghold of his enemies?”  The thin man smiled repulsively.  “You’re a long way from home, boy.”

Steve forced himself to be calm.  Seeing the STRIKE Team flanking him like this…  The panic was coming back, sharp and damning, but he was _better_ than this.  He couldn’t let it take him.  He wouldn’t let them take him.  Never again.  He’d die first.  “Walk away,” he warned.

Sircio laughed, a surprisingly high-pitched giggle of a thing.  Distinctive for a guy of his size.  Steve heard it in his head, too.  Sircio laughing as Rollins and Ramirez held him down.  Laughing as Rumlow jabbed his stun baton into his ribs, into where he’d broken his back.  Cackling like a goddamn madman.  Somehow that ridiculous sound was louder than the roar of his heart and the strained rush of his breath.  It was _all_ he could hear.  “You have to be kidding, Cap.  You think we’re going to let you go?”  His chortling ceased, and his face darkened into a scowl.  “You and Barton did a real fucking number on Rumlow.”

“Rumlow’s dead,” Steve said, trying to keep his voice level even though he was afraid.  Not just afraid.  Terrified.  There was tightness in his chest again.  This wasn’t rational; he knew he was stronger and faster than them.  They didn’t have him at their mercy this time, and he knew their moves because he’d fought with them, trained with them, _trained_ them.  He could defeat them.  He could.  And Rumlow was dead.

“Is that what you heard?” Ramirez taunted.  “’Cause someone’s lying to you, Cap.  He’s very much alive.  And one day, he’ll come after you.”  Steve must have blanched.  That made Sircio laugh again, and the group got more certain of themselves and stepped closer, surrounding him.  The streets were dark, cold, and empty.  He was alone, and he was sinking into the nightmares in his head.  The fog and Rumlow holding him down.  “But why wait?  Come on.  We’ll take you to see him.  He’ll be thrilled to watch us finish what he started.”

Rage rushed over Steve.  Rage and horror.  “You’re not finishing anything.  You’re not taking me anywhere.  _Walk away._ ”

“How you gonna make us?” one of the others asked.  “No shield.”

“We broke you, Rogers,” Sircio said.  “Don’t you remember?  We made you _beg_.”

“No, you didn’t,” Steve said, but he couldn’t really remember.  Had he begged at the end?  Had he?

The group saw right through his fake bravado and practically guffawed.  Steve backed up before he thought better of it.  He was shaking.  _This isn’t you._   Peggy had said that.  Sam.  Bucky.  _Nat._   _This isn’t you.  This isn’t you._ _They didn’t break you.  They couldn’t break you._   “We’re going to bust you up now.  Seriously.  But we’re not going to kill you.  Screw these Ruski bastards and their bullshit mission.  We’ll drag your ass back to Lukin and see if he’ll pony up some of that bounty for you instead of Romanoff.”  Another gruff laugh.  “Maybe he can tame you like he tamed your old war buddy.”

That was it.  Steve snapped.  He moved like lightning, grabbing Ramirez around the throat and throwing him into the wall of the building to their left.  The ex-SHIELD agent hit hard with a loud crunch.  Sircio was going for a gun, but he never made it.  Steve snatched his wrist and broke it with a twist, hauling him around like he weighed nothing and slamming him into Blackburn.  They both went down, tangled up together.  The others attacked, sloppy and without skill, and he stepped into one lunge, driving his shoulder into a chest and flinging the huge thug up and over himself.  The man landed on his back with a cry and didn’t escape fast enough to avoid Steve’s boot into his face.  There was a knife thrown at him.  He heard it more than saw it, and he caught it by the hilt as he whirled.  He threw it back, watching in satisfaction as it drove deep into abdomen of the man who’d tossed it.  A howl of frustration blared in his ear, but he lithely avoided the lunge and instead drove his knee up into the assailant’s chest once, twice, punching the air from his lungs.  Steve’s elbow went down hard into his back with a snap that sounded awful.  The last guy looked terrified, but still he came in a rush.  And he fell in a flash, the same as the others.

Steve barely came back to himself, breathing heavily, surrounded by a slew of moaning, whimpering, quivering bodies on the street.  He fought hard to get control of himself, of his fiery emotions, of his _anger._   Before he even realized what he was doing, he stalked to the wall of the building and grabbed Ramirez by his shirt where he was crumpled against it.  He hauled him up, caught the man’s wide, desperate eyes with his own, before punching him hard enough to break bones.  He slammed him into the building behind them viciously.  Brutally.  Over and over again.  He knew how hard he could hit.  He knew exactly what he could do.  He could kill a man without even trying.  He could kill this man.  He wanted to kill him.  He wanted to kill them all.

But he didn’t.

Ramirez was weeping, sputtering on a bloody breath, pupils blown huge by fear and trauma.  Steve slowly lowered his threatening fist.  He swallowed down the burning tightness in his throat, realizing more and more how close he was to losing all semblance of himself.  _This isn’t you.  This isn’t who you are.  You’ve never lost your way.  They never broke you.  Never._ He pulled Ramirez close, every muscle in his body taut with barely restrained anger.  “If any of you ever touch me again,” he hissed, “I won’t stop.  I’ll kill you.”  He released him, dumping his battered form onto the ground.

Then Steve turned, spotting the wiry man trying to make an escape.  He smoothly leapt over the injured men, not even running really, and caught the bastard.  The man squeaked, shaking so badly that Steve had to grab him by the scruff of his neck to get a decent hold.  He lifted him a good foot off the ground, carrying him over to the wall and driving him into it.  “Talk,” he ordered harshly.  “Who was that guy in there?  What’s Lukin trying to move into the US?”

The man was positively petrified.  “That man – I don’t know anything about him.  They, uh, they call him the Swordsman!”

“Don’t lie to me,” Steve warned.

“I’m not!  I’m not!”

“What are they sending into New York?”

“I – I don’t know anything!  I came for the money, same as you!”

“I’m not here for the money,” Steve hissed, pushing him harder into the wall.  He wrapped his hand around the guy’s throat and squeezed, enough to threaten but not enough to cause damage.  “I’m here to stop them.  And to find Natasha Romanoff.  Where is she?”

His prisoner went white with shock and fear, like he was realizing he couldn’t give Steve what Steve wanted.  “Black Widow?  I don’t know!  I don’t know!”

“What does Lukin want with her?”

“I don’t know!”

“You don’t know _anything,_ do you,” Steve snarled in frustration.  “What’s the omega?  Where else are they recruiting this Red Army?”  The man just whimpered helplessly.  Steve lost his patience entirely.  The urge to just beat the answers out of him was so strong.  Too strong.  _“_ Answer me!  _Where’s Black Widow?”_

And that was it, too.  The guy passed out.  Steve hadn’t even been strangling him, really.  He just fainted.  Disgusted and irritated, Steve let him fall to the street with the rest of the beaten gang.  He stood still a moment, still panting, his heart racing not at all from physical exertion but from emotional upheaval.  God, what had he almost done?  He felt horrified and satisfied and vindicated and hurt.  He felt sick but then numb.  His limbs were tingling, trembling.  His legs were beneath him.  He moved.  He picked up Natasha’s folder where it had fallen out of his jacket during the melee.  As he stuffed it under his arm, he remembered there was a gun there, tucked in the holster on his shoulder harness.  Two guns.  Weapons he hadn’t even pulled.  Hadn’t used.  Hadn’t needed.  Whatever else he was, he was still a soldier.  And whatever else Erskine had envisioned for Project: Rebirth, they’d made his body into the ultimate weapon.  He walked away, feeling closer to this dark, hellish world than he ever had before.

* * *

He made his way back to the car along the most meandering path imaginable.  It took nearly forty-five minutes of avoiding the police and avoiding the other dark faces still loitering around that church and house and empty lot, but he made it.  Then he jabbed the keys in the ignition, turned the car on, and drove _._   He didn’t know where.  He wasn’t thinking.  He wasn’t feeling.  He was just going, desperate to get away, to escape what had happened, what he’d almost done.

When he finally came back to himself enough to realize where he was, he’d gone almost an hour further north of Moscow.  He’d driven all this way in a haze of waking nightmare and pain and exhaustion.  He pulled over, so damn guilty and ashamed of himself.  He turned the car off and sat back, tipping his head to the ceiling.  He was shaking again.  Shivering because he was cold.  _So cold._   “God,” he whispered.  His hands were still tight on the steering wheel.  He looked at them, flawless and strong and _huge_.  He didn’t recognize them right then.  They weren’t his hands.  Not the hands that had drawn countless pictures of horses and puppies and flowers for Bucky’s little sisters.  Not the hands that had feebly thrown a punch so the kids even smaller and younger than him could escape the bullies.  Not the hands that had shared a beer with Bucky on his eighteenth birthday at Coney Island.  Not the hands that had wiped the sweat from his mother’s feverish forehead as she’d lain dying in their apartment.  _Not his hands._

Not the hands that had held his shield and fought for what was right.

And not the hands that brushed the tears from Natasha’s cheeks as he’d told her he loved her.

He was so lost.  _So lost._

He choked on a sob.  He leaned forward, bracing his forehead on the steering wheel.  He stayed like that for a long time, teetering on what felt to be the edge of complete collapse.  _You stopped yourself.  You didn’t do it.  You didn’t do it._   Logic was a poor, poor shield, and there was no one there to support him.  He was supposed to be Captain America.  A good man.  But was he really any different from the Red Skull or the Red Guardian or the Winter Soldier?  Erskine’s serum had worked on him, and that was it.  It was chemicals and genetics and the right place and the right time.  Alpha serum and beta serums and…  _Stop.  You stopped yourself.  You stopped yourself!_

_Who the hell am I anymore?_

He was Captain America.

_No, not without her.  Not until I save her._

He needed to find Natasha.

He needed to call Tony.

Steve furiously wiped at his eyes, fishing for Sam’s phone in his pocket.  He dialed Tony, but just like it had dozens of times before, the damn thing didn’t work.  “NETWORK ERROR”.  “What the hell is wrong with this?” he demanded like there was someone there who could possibly answer him.  What was he supposed to do?  How could he warn the others?  Find a payphone?  He’d tried that, but that, too, seemed to be blocked as Sam had said, like something was preventing calls from reaching Stark Tower.  He was so frustrated that he tossed the phone to the seat beside him.  It hit the folders sitting there just so, dumping them to the floor.  Natasha’s past.  The dossier on the Winter Soldier.  It all spilled onto the car’s carpet with a flutter of yellowed pages and ancient history.  He stared at the mess in a mixture of defeat and disgust, unwilling to even reach over to gather it up.  He was never going to find her.  He was alone here.  No way to contact Tony or Sam or _anyone._   No leads.  No clues.  He couldn’t find her.

That sunk into him like the ice that had killed him.

“Enough,” he said to himself.  _This isn’t me.  This isn’t who I am._

_They didn’t break me.  I’m still…  I’m Captain America._

It took a little more time and effort to make himself reach down and pick up his fallen files.  When he did, something caught his eye.  In retrospect, he realized it was one of those things.  Divine intervention.  God’s will.  Fate.  Destiny.  A picture had fallen out of the dossier on the Winter Soldier.  It was half tucked into an extremely aged envelope.  The photo was dated June 1963.  Three young men dressed in Russian military uniforms were standing outside a building somewhere.  Steve recognized two of them immediately.  Aleksander Lukin and Yuri Brushov.  The third…  He stared, analyzing the man’s face.  His eyes.  Eyes Steve had seen before.  Those eyes had looked up at him after the fight on the pier in Volgograd, pleading with him to take care of Natasha…  Begging Steve to love her because _he_ had loved her, married her, tried to save her from Brushov’s nightmares.  The man in the picture was Andrei Shostakov, Alexei Shostakov’s father.

Suddenly he couldn’t breathe.  He picked up Natasha’s file, frantically flipping through page after page after page, not reading, not letting _anything_ inside his head except what he knew would be there.  After a moment, he found it.  The mission report from 2002.  Black Widow had been dispatched to kill Andrei Shostakov and bring his son Alexei back to Brushov.  Her mission was to pose as a dancer in Shostakov’s ballet company…

_In St. Petersberg._

Steve’s eyes widened.  Suddenly he knew.  He knew where she was, where she would hide, where she would feel safe.  He didn’t understand why he was so certain, but he was, down in the core of his heart where his love for her had never been touched.  Where he couldn’t doubt.  He knew.  _He knew._

_Look.  Look and see the truth.  Look and find your way._

He’d found it.

He’d found her.

He turned the car back on and drove north, deep into the Russian countryside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Izvinite. Byl li zdaniye zdes'?_ – Excuse me. Was there a building here?  
>  _Da, no eto byla snesena let nazad._ – Yes, but it was torn down years ago.  
>  _Bylo li eto pereyekhal?_ – Was it moved?  
>  _Ya ne znayu. Ostav' menya v pokoye._ – I don't know. Leave me alone.  
>  _Zdravstvuyte?_ – Hello?  
>  _Zdravstvuyte? Yest' zdes' kto-nibud'?_ – Hello? Is there anyone here?  
>  _Ey! Kto-to zdes'?_ – Hey! Is someone here?  
>  _Da._ – Yes.  
>  _Chto ty delayesh'?_ – What are you doing?  
>  _Nachalo chto-to dlya bossa._ – Getting something for the boss.  
>  _Davay. Oni nachinayut._ – Come on. They're starting.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE:** Warnings for sex. Read at your own discretion :-). Enjoy, everyone, and thank you all!

Four days passed before Natasha caught sight of anybody, so it took her a bit by surprise when she heard the distant hum of a car engine.  She sat up from the daybed she’d pulled by one of the windows on the second floor, the one with the best vantage of the southern road that led through the barren pastures beyond the mansion.  With the dusty curtains positioned as they were, she had a fairly good vantage without betraying her presence to anyone potentially approaching.  She saw nothing at first, and it was so quiet that for a moment she wondered if her ears hadn’t deceived her.  She was a tad punch-drunk on solitude, the sort where one’s senses begin to play tricks on one’s mind simply for sport.  It was real, though, and it was getting louder.  Fear tickled through her, and she pulled the gun she had on the bed beside her closer.  The ground outside was mossy, rocky, and unkempt, and washed in the red of a dying sun.  It looked not at all how she remembered it from the last time she’d been here over a decade ago.  Then it had been lush, green with summer, filled with flowerbeds and trees tended by the estate’s company of gardeners.  She scanned the brown and gray earth, looking miles down the singular driveway that led to the mansion.  She waited, tracing her eyes over the craggy, brown brush, holding her breath.  A moment or two later a single black SUV appeared.  The road wasn’t well marked any more, but the car stuck to it all the same, weaving along the turns through the hills.  Natasha silently slid down from the bed, creeping low to the dusty, old floorboards to stay hidden as she moved to the window on the other side of the dance studio.  The sound of the engine was louder, closer.  She peered through the grimy window pane, barely raising her eyes over the sill.  The car came around the front, the pebbles of the drive crunching and popping loudly under its tires.  Obviously whoever it was wasn’t making much of an effort to hide his or her approach.

Natasha couldn’t see who that was, though.  She could hardly think for her sudden fear.  Who had found her?  _No one_ knew about this place.  Not anymore.  Twenty years ago Shostakov’s dancing company and academy had been world-renowned, affiliated with the Mariinsky Ballet and other famous dance troupes all over Russia.  However, after Andrei Shostakov’s death, the establishment had withered, losing its prestige, its endowment, its high quality of instructors and talented students alike.  Shostakov had been wealthy, and his love for the arts, particularly ballet, had been the fire behind the school.  Now the place was nothing more than an abandoned husk, its halls and rooms telling a rich and illustrious story of a beautiful, respected history that had abruptly ended in dust, tarp-covered furniture, and silence.  No one came here now.  That was why she’d known she’d be safe.  This was familiar ground to her.  Almost sacred ground, full of memories of Alexei and the freedom of dancing and laughing with the other girls like she’d simply been another ballerina eager to perform even if it had all been part of her lies.

The car came around to the rear of the building.  She couldn’t see it anymore.  _Damn it._ Natasha grabbed her gun and quietly ran down the staircase at the end of the hall, passing practice rooms and dormitories and offices.  She bounded into what had been the servants’ area, racing through the mansion like a shadow.  Who the hell had known to find her here?  It was one car, so that didn’t ring of a professional.  Either that or this bounty hunter (or old enemy) was so confident and arrogant that he (or she – Belova coming to reclaim her lost prize?) thought it would be easy to capture her.  That enraged her.  After days of laying low, slowly eating through the paltry amount of food she’d stolen on her way north and waiting and worrying and feeling sick, the idea that some bastard thought she’d be an easy catch…  She’d show him.  She’d kill him.

Unless it was that… that _thing_ that had attacked Clint.  She stopped in her tracks, blood turning to ice in her veins.  _Run.  Go now.  Get out of here._   It wasn’t rational, and she knew it.  She highly doubted that monster, whatever it was, would come after her in an SUV.  And, more importantly, there was nowhere she could run.  It was a mile at least on all sides to the woods, and she’d have to cross that terrain in the open.  Any bounty hunter worth anything would take advantage of that, trap her inside the mansion…  _Hide._

 _No._   Maybe it was foolish and dangerous, but she didn’t want to hide.  She was Black Widow.  Whoever had somehow managed to find her would face her wrath.  She checked her gun even though she knew it was loaded and ready before slipping on quiet footfalls through the mansion.  Past the huge ballroom.  Past the auditorium.  She danced on the floor, lithe and elegant, knowing exactly where to step and precisely how long she could place her weight to avoid the boards creaking.  She darted among the evening shadows, moving swiftly to the windows in the rear of the building.  The kitchen wasn’t overly large, but it was more modern than the rest of the mansion.  Windows lined the long counter against the far wall, but they were mostly boarded up, blocking her view.  She ran to the right, moving from window to window, staying low and skirting to the last one before the tiled hallway that led to the loading bay and rear storerooms.  The car door opened and closed.  She glanced up and saw a dark form jogging away through gaps in the boards.  She still couldn’t see who.  Her face twisting into a calm scowl, Natasha turned to the short hallway.  She ran down to its end, pressing herself to the doors and crouching.  If this asshole thought he was going to surprise her, ambush her…

Footsteps crunched on the stone walk outside, coming closer slowly.  Maybe hesitantly.  Natasha waited patiently, poised and cool.  When the steps were louder, she grabbed the bar of the door.  These doors were fire escape doors; they only opened from the inside.  If her assailant didn’t realize that until he got too close…  She waited.  And when she heard the scuffle of boots directly outside, she sprung.

Natasha rammed her hip into the bar.  The door swung open with the force, slamming into whoever had come.  There was a surprised, pained grunt.  Natasha brought her gun up, but the man was fast.  He was already recovering, rolling backward, and springing up with his own gun raised.

Natasha couldn’t breathe.  “Steve…”

Steve shot to his feet, dropping his gun instantly.  “Nat.”

The world slowed around them.  A breeze brushed between them, caressing with chilly fingers, but neither of them noticed.  Neither of them could see anything else, not anything beyond each other, and neither of them felt anything else but this endless moment.  Natasha’s heart was pounding, now not in rage or fear, but in shock.  In joy and grief.  In _relief_.  Steve stared at her, stared like he couldn’t believe she was actually there.  His eyes were wide, hollow in a way, ringed in exhaustion.  He was at once exactly as she remembered, tall, strong, and beautiful, but he was new, too.  He looked haggard.  Hurt.  Low.  All of those terrible things she’d seen festering in him after the battle over the Potomac were worse, the _damage_ so obvious, amplified and deeply set into him.  And in these few short weeks since he’d walked away at that cemetery in DC, she’d forgotten so much.  The line of his jaw, now covered in a new beard.  The angle of his nose.  The fullness of his lips, parted in heavy, panting breaths.  His eyes, so brightly blue like the clearest sky, even still, even after everything that had happened.  He was familiar, but a stranger, too.  He was who he had been, but he wasn’t.  He was…

He was there.  That was all that mattered, all she could think.  _He was there._

She lowered her gun, dragging a ragged breath into her chest.  A million hectic thoughts raced through her brain, battling for dominance.  What had happened to Clint.  What Belova had done.  The lies Yelena had spread about her.  HYDRA hunting her.  The bounty on her head and what had happened with Stern and the baby the baby _the baby–_

That wasn’t what she said to him, though.  She couldn’t do it.  These long nights alone, when she’d been frightened of every creak of this old place like a silly child terrified of ghosts, she’d gotten her mind away from her anguish by concentrating on what she would say to him.  How she would tell him, if he somehow found her.  If she ever saw him again.  Now the moment was here, and she couldn’t find the words.  She couldn’t find the words because she was afraid of everything they’d left unsettled, everything that had torn them apart.  She looked into his eyes, looked and tried to read him, but she couldn’t.  Not entirely.  Her own heart was so splintered and shaken that she couldn’t see what he was feeling.  Had he forgiven her for not telling him the truth about Barnes?  Had he learned what Belova had done?

Did he trust her?  “Steve, I never–”

“I know,” he said, still breathless.

She swallowed through a dry throat, barely able to contain the wave of relief assailing her.  She wanted to collapse it was so strong.  “How did you find me?” she whispered.

He shook his head.  “I…  I just knew you would be here.”

The way he said that was so sincere, so earnest, so _him_ , that she didn’t for a moment doubt his honesty.  Anyone else would have been a fool or a liar to say something like that.  Not him.  And that was all it took.  She stepped across the small distance between them, closing her eyes against the burning in them, and wrapped her arms around him.  The feel of him, so solid and strong under her fingers, under her cheek, against her body…  It was like a balm to her, hot and _real_ to senses so long deprived.  She’d wanted this so badly, yearned for it, dreamed about it, and now he was there and she leaned up to kiss him.

But she didn’t because he pulled away.  Slightly.  Timidly.  She didn’t realize until then that he was stiff, embracing her back but trembling and uncertain of himself.  Or uncertain of her.  That was like a knife into her heart.  She looked into his eyes again.  There was such a storm of things – doubt and desire and fear and so much pain – that she still couldn’t understand what he was thinking or feeling.  The only thing she knew for sure was that _he_ didn’t understand any of it, either.  “We should go,” he softly said.

And with that there was so much _more_ pain.  Pain in her, too, because that knife was slicing and cutting deeper and suddenly she thought she was going to be sick again.  But she didn’t let it reach her face.  She let him go.  “Where?”

He shrugged helplessly before bending to retrieve his gun.  “Anywhere.  Somewhere safe.”

She should have snapped at him for suggesting he could take better care of her than she could of herself, but she didn’t.  “This is somewhere safe.    No one is going to look for me here.  All the people who knew about my time here are dead.”  He seemed like he wanted to question her.  She headed him off at the pass.  “The school was shut down a decade ago.  And it’s remote and secluded.  I’ve been here for days, and you’re the first person I’ve seen.”

Suddenly he seemed antsy, glancing around, taking in the towering form of the weathered mansion and the cold, lonely fields around them.  His eyes narrowed, and he spent a moment considering it.  “Alright,” he said.  “We’ll hole up here until Tony and the others can come get us.  I need to hide the car.”

She nodded.  “There’s a shed by the woods back there.”

He pulled the keys from his pocket and walked back to the SUV.  She followed, rubbing her arms against the chill and trying desperately not to think.  This wasn’t what she wanted.  This aching emptiness.  He opened the trunk and pulled out a couple of duffel bags.  She watched quizzically, taking one as he handed it to her.  “What happened to Sam?”

Steve finished gathering up his supplies.  “He went back to the States after Tony called us about Clint.”  Natasha stiffened before she could stop herself. Steve slammed the trunk of the car and gazed at her sympathetically.  “He’s alive, Nat.  At least he was when I last talked to them.  But he was hurt bad.  That thing that attacked you guys put him into some sort of a coma.”

She was numb, reeling at that, uncertain of whether to be relieved or horrified.  She hadn’t left Clint to die.  Clint wasn’t dead. _At least not yet._   That was too distressing, one more miserable worry on top of so many others, so she dismissed it.  She shouldered the bag he gave her, felt the weight and form of what could only be weapons inside it.  Steve watched her, analyzing her like he was trying to decide something.  “They told me it’s hunting you.  Why?”  _The baby._ She couldn’t make herself say it.  She couldn’t even make herself look at him.  Thankfully, he didn’t press her.  His face softened.  “Let’s get inside.”

“Were you followed?” she asked.

“I don’t think so.”  He got into the car and turned it back on.  “I’ll be right back.”  Now he managed half a smile, a faint thing that only made her hurt more to see him so weak.  They stared at each other, uncertain, this awkwardness between them that had never really been there before.  Then he put the car into gear and drove along the old path behind to the mansion to the shed.  Natasha watched the car until she couldn’t see it anymore as it rolled closer to the trees.  Then she went around to the front.

Back inside the school, she paused in the foyer to open up the bag.  There were indeed guns inside.  A shotgun and a rifle.  Plenty of ammunition.  A few grenades even.  _Thank God._   For days she’d been trying to guard herself with a knife, a handgun, and whatever blunt objects she’d been able to gather around the mansion.  It had been emptied of anything valuable when the school had closed, and looters had ravaged it years ago and stolen everything else.  But she’d managed to find an old axe down in the basement and a pipe that she was keeping upstairs by the daybed she was using as a look-out post.  Having actual guns was utterly comforting.  She heard the sound of feet outside again, and glanced through another boarded up window on the ground floor to see Steve running closer, bearing the other bag and a backpack.  She went to the massive front doors and opened them for him.

He came inside, eyes narrowed as he appraised the once palatial foyer.  Double staircases, ornate and beautiful under the corrosion of time and neglect, climbed up to the second floor on either side of the room.  The chandelier that had once hung above them, crystalline and bright, had long ago been taken or stolen, leaving the room gray with shadows.  Natasha watched him look around, and she couldn’t help but imagine the sound of girls’ voices, of the instructors demanding quiet, of Andrei’s bellowing voice as he stood at the top of that staircase and welcomed his dancers into his home…  Bright sunlight reflecting off of gold filigree woven into everything, rugs and wood and plaster.  Beauty and grace.  Power.  It was so vivid that she almost lost herself.

It took her a moment to realize Steve was staring at her again.  “This is where you learned to dance?”

“Yes.”

“You never told me about it.”

She wasn’t sure if that was an accusation or simply a statement of fact, so she said nothing to it.  “More guns?”

He dropped his duffel to the floor and unzipped it.  He handed her another shotgun and a second automatic rifle.  She saw some flashlights, clothes, and a first aid kit inside the bag as well.  “Might be able to hold anyone coming after us for at least a while.  How secure are we here?”

“Most of the ground windows are boarded.  I reinforced what I could.  The lock on the front door is broken, and I couldn’t fix it.”

“What other ways in are there?”

This was easy.  Familiar.  Talking shop.  Talking about a situation.  A mission.  “The fire escape doors you saw by the kitchen.  There are a couple more in the auditoriums, but I couldn’t get those to open, not from the outside or from in here.  There’s a cellar access that I blocked.”  She’d done the best she could, but the mansion was huge.  There’d simply been no way for her to reinforce every window and every door, let alone defend them.  She’d hinged her safety on being able to hide, on using the sheer size and breadth of the school to her advantage.  “There’s a rehearsal room upstairs by the dormitory that has a good view south.  I saw you coming a few miles away.  That’s where I’ve been staying.”

Steve didn’t look pleased with the situation.  “Alright.  I’ll see about getting something in front of the door here.  Take this.”  He reached into his jeans pocket, pulled out his cellphone, and handed it to her.  “Try calling Stark.  I haven’t had much luck.”

Puzzled, she took the device, thumbing it on and searching for Stark’s name in the contacts list.  “What’s the matter?”

“It keeps giving me some sort of error,” Steve answered.  He was already moving to the left, where there were large, spacious seating areas.  His voice echoed.  “My luck with technology, I guess.”  It was the most light-hearted thing he’d said, and it was riddled with frustration.  Natasha dialed Tony’s number and lifted the phone to her ear, but it never rang.  She pulled it away.  “NETWORK ERROR”.  The same thing that had happened when she’d tried to call Sam with her own phone before fleeing New York.  An ache akin to dread settled in the pit of her stomach, making her nausea surge.  Something wasn’t right about this.  She dialed Tony again.  And again.  Nothing.  It wasn’t even attempting to make the call.  _Damn it._

There was a painfully loud bang, and then a scraping noise resounded, like something heavy was being dragged across the floor.  Steve was back a few moments later, lugging an entire wooden bookcase.  She recognized it as one of the ones that had lined the wall in the adjacent sitting room.  It looked like it weighed hundreds of pounds, and he was pulling it like it was nothing.  He shoved it up to the door.  “Anything?”

“No.”  She lowered the StarkPhone from her ear in irritation.

“What about your phone?”

Belova had taken it when she’d captured her, but Natasha didn’t want to go into that.  Not now.  “Lost it.”

Steve shook his head unhappily before heading back into the room.  She heard him breaking things, probably ripping another bookshelf from the wall.  Turning back to the useless phone in her hands, she searched through the apps, looking for something, _anything_ to help them.  Eventually (even though she knew it was a longshot) she tried a plain, simple text message.  Quickly she typed “need extraction” and their location to Tony.  She hesitated a moment, her thumb poised over the send button.  Then she pressed it.

Shockingly, it seemed to work.  She smiled in relief, her hand automatically coming down to her belly, and called to Steve.  “I got a text through.”

He was pulling the second bookcase, struggling a little more with this one due to its sheer size.  He paused after dragging it to the doors, meeting her gaze and panting slightly.  He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing, and nodded.  “Any way to tell if he received it?”

“Not unless he texts back,” she admitted, her elation souring with that.  She resent the text again just to be sure.  And a third time almost compulsively.

Steve was wary.  “We can wait for a bit, I guess.  But, Nat, if that thing comes after us…”

“I know.”  _We’ll run._

He stared at her a moment more.  God, he looked so tired.  So _broken._   The urge to go to him was nearly overwhelming, but she didn’t.  She couldn’t.  It was like her feet were rooted, her heart tied up in her chest, her mind locked in this queer stasis where she didn’t know what he wanted.  Everything she wanted to ask him and tell him prodded at her lips again, but she didn’t say anything, and he turned back to his task.  The muscles of his arms and back flexed under his coat as he lifted the bookcase over his shoulders and slammed it on top of the first one.  The impact rattled the doors.  The makeshift barricade was over ten feet high now.  Surely it would slow anyone trying to get in.

Steve sagged into the underside of the lower bookcase.  Natasha felt concern spike inside her, and now she was beside him before she even thought to move.  “Steve…”

He stepped away, gathering himself with great effort.  “Show me what’s upstairs,” he ordered.  To anyone else, he sounded like Captain America, cool and confident and strong.  To her, it was all a front, a mask that was not at all convincing.  He was already walking before she could even touch him, and biting her tongue was all she could do to not yell at him to talk to her.  Her own anger was simmering, but she held it back.  She wasn’t going to hurt him.  She wasn’t going to demand or accuse or upset him.  He needed her.  She could see it in every short breath, every quick glance, every tremble he was trying to hide.  No matter what she wanted, what she needed to tell him, she had to help him first.  That was selfless in a way that felt novel and frightening but somehow right.

She turned and headed up one side of the grand staircase.  The old wood creaked and groaned as she climbed, Steve behind her, bearing the bags and most of the guns.  They reached the second floor.  She led him through the old corridors, filled with dust and peeling paint and wallpaper.  Again it was eerie with the ghosts of the past, beautiful girls in leotards with their hair done up in sleek, perfect buns, ballet slippers, the low, taciturn melody of a piano.  Sunlight streaming into the dance studios, over the barre where the girls had stood, all long lines and pale skin.  She’d wandered these halls the last few days, remembering the times she’d been there, a part of the class, practicing hard, her lips wet with sweat and quirked into a smile for Alexei who was watching coyly from the hall.  She remembered wanting to stay forever, wanting to escape, wanting to believe her own lies.  She’d lied to many people in her life but none so much or so easily as herself.

Silently she walked toward the large rehearsal room on the southeast corner of the building.  The daybed was there where she’d left it, shoved against the wall beneath the boarded windows and dusty curtains.  The mussed blankets and old pillows she’d managed to find in the basement looked sad and uncomfortable.  Steve looked even more so as he gazed upon where she’d been living.  Hiding.  Alone.  He sighed softly, carrying their gear inside and setting it down with a clank.  Then he went to the window she had been using to watch the lands beyond.

Natasha swallowed down the knot in her throat and crouched beside the bags.  She pulled out the other shotgun, making sure it was loaded.  She ejected the magazine on the Colt M4, seeing it was full before snapping it back in.  She took a quick inventory of what else was there; it was sizeable, but if HYDRA came at them with any force, it wouldn’t be enough.  It was silent, tense, in the seconds she worked.  She leaned back for a moment, staring at the spread of weapons, before standing.

Steve was staring at her yet again, but this time there was intensity in his eyes that was almost frightening.  His brow furrowed with confusion, his mouth open with a voiceless question, and he crossed the room to her.  She didn’t understand until he was right in front of her, and his hand was reaching for her chest.  She looked down and realized what he’d seen.  She went cold, suddenly afraid of his reaction, as he slowly pulled his dog tags from her sweatshirt.  After all, he’d never given them to her.  She’d just taken them, like she’d taken so much of what she’d wanted from him.  He lifted them, inspecting them as if he didn’t recognize them.  The silence seemed infinite for how nervous she was.  Then his expression shattered and the breath that was punched from his lips was shaking.  “Oh, God, Nat,” he whispered.  He closed his eyes, shivering as he curled his fingers around his dog tags and bowed his head.  “I’m sorry.  I’m so sorry!”

She grabbed him tight, pulling him close, and he gasped a heavy sob into her shoulder as she tucked his head into her.  She held him as he came apart in her arms.  It seemed like everything that he’d lost, all the damage done to him by HYDRA and the STRIKE Team and the Red Guardian and having his best friend turn into his worst enemy…  It was all bleeding out of him now, a long overdue release of the pain and misery.  He was quiet as he cried, wavering and shivering with great, heaving breaths, and she breathed through it with him, her fingers tight in his hair and around his back.  There was no need for words.  There was nothing she needed to say, and she couldn’t think of anything, anyway.  She simply stood there and held him, afraid to be so giving and strong but knowing this what was what she needed to be.

When his breathing finally slowed and evened out against her neck, she let him raise his head.  He looked down on her with watery blue eyes, cheeks wet, lips red and chapped from being worried by his teeth.  She cupped his face, sweeping her hands over the honeyed scruff of his beard, and held his gaze.  She never looked away.  She _anchored_ him.  “It’s okay.  Just breathe.  I’m right here,” she promised.  Her thumb slid over his lower lip, slow and tender.  “I’ve got you.  Breathe.”

He exhaled like he was letting the weight of the world slip off his shoulders.  He stared into her eyes now, calmer.  When her thumb caressed back over his lips, he kissed it, tentative and uncertain.  That didn’t last, though.  His gaze settled on hers again, hungry and more focused, and he kissed her hard and fast.  Natasha moaned in surprise, barely having a moment to get her arms around him before he was backing her into the wall on the other side of the rehearsal room.  She hit it, jolting in surprise as he pinned her there with his weight, his knee jutting up between her legs.  Natasha opened her mouth to him, letting him in, and he was ravenous, possessive, _powerful_ as he kissed her breathless.  She obediently lifted her arms as he grabbed the hem of her sweatshirt and yanked it over her head.  He was dumping his jacket on the floor after that, never losing contact, his mouth hot and wet as it swept down her face to the hollow of her throat.  He pushed her harder into the wall, pulling the straps of her bra off her shoulders.  His lips went there next, his tongue swirling over her collarbone, fingers dancing down into her bra.  Natasha could hardly think under the onslaught of passion and excitement.  Everything was driven from her head by bliss, everything that had happened and where they were and the baby.  She was so sick of her worries and troubles that she eagerly let them go.  Her own hands shook as she worked the bottom of his shirt out from where it was half tucked into his jeans.  His shoulder harness and gun still holstered inside it hit the floor with a thud.  She rucked his shirt up, reaching for the planes of his stomach, for the hard muscles fluttering under her fingers.  Maybe it had only been weeks since they’d been together, but it felt like forever, and everything seemed so novel that it was almost too much.  Too hot.  Too hard.  _Too much_ , but somehow not enough and not fast enough.  Her fingers uncharacteristically fumbled for the buckle of his belt, failing rather spectacularly at first in trying to get it open.  She couldn’t seem to manage it, not with the dizzying pressure of his mouth on her and his hips shoving her into the wall.  Finally she got it undone, and the button and fly of his jeans, and she was pushing his pants down and he was doing the same to her.  She kicked hers off and not a moment too soon because his hands were demanding as they cupped her bottom and lifted her onto him.

Natasha thought she might pass out.  Pleasure arched through her like liquid fire, heat she hadn’t known in what felt like forever burning wickedly over her.  It sent her eyes rolling up to the ceiling, and when he started to move she keened and dropped her forehead to his shoulder.  Her voice was one ragged, breathy moan after another against his skin.  She wrapped her legs around him more fully, letting him bear her weight, letting him take control and do what he wanted.  And she could feel how _badly_ he wanted.  This was rougher than he’d ever been, more unrestrained, wild with need and emotion.  He’d always been so careful with her, continually checking his strength no matter how many times she’d assured him that he wouldn’t hurt her.  And he’d always been the reserved one, the one who let her lead and direct, the one who _gave_ rather than _took_.  This was frightening and thrilling and utterly incredible all at once, and she couldn’t escape even if she wanted to.  His breath was hot against the nape of her neck, a rhythmic suck and blast of air that hitched as he clumsily kissed his way up to her mouth and just as messily kissed his way inside.  She gave up on scrabbling for purchase against him, hooking her hands around his neck and simply _holding on_.  The wall creaked loudly behind them.  The floor groaned as he shifted his weight.  The edge of his dog tags was painfully jabbing into her sternum, crushed between their bodies, rattling with each movement and sticky with sweat.  He pushed her harder, hard enough to bruise.  Part of her thought about the baby again, the slight bulge in her stomach crushed against him, but it was a passing, trifling concern because he picked up his pace with an intensity that was blinding.  She arched her back at the jolt of pleasure shooting to her spine, trying to get him deeper and shoving her breasts to his mouth.  She couldn’t help the loud, embarrassing cry that poured from her, couldn’t help anything anymore.

He stopped.  It happened so suddenly that it ripped a wail of frustration from her.  “What?” she whined miserably, opening eyes she’d squeezed shut to see him pale and covered in sweat and shaking again.  He was staring, wide-eyed and terrified, at her chest.  She didn’t understand at first, and this abrupt, agonizing halt was unbearable.  She angled her hips against his to encourage him, but it was too late, and she positively _throbbed_ with emptiness when he pulled away.  By the time she realized she was standing alone, he was already staggering across the room, tripping on his pants. Gasping and shaking, she nearly crumpled without him there to support her.  “What?  Steve, Steve, wait–”

He fumbled to pull his jeans back up, and, after he did, he fell to his knees next to the bed.  He was trembling so violently that fear dashed the last bit of passion from her head.  She scrambled over to him, worried in a way she’d never been before.  She reached for him, curling her hands over his shoulders and pulling him to her.  And she didn’t let go, not even when he shuddered and tried to pull away.  “Steve–”

“I hurt you,” he whispered.  His eyes were wide but clouded, glazed with some grotesque mixture of lust and despair.  They eventually focused on the faint scar on her torso where she’d been shot by the Winter Soldier.

Horror left her cold.  “No, no,” she said.  “No.”

“Don’t lie to me,” he said, and she realized he wasn’t just talking about here and now.  He was talking about _everything_.  Their argument.  A _bandoning_ her to hunt for the Winter Soldier when she’d needed him at her side.  Her getting shot in his stead.  The horrors she’d had to witness and endure because he’d foolishly surrendered himself to Pierce and SHIELD.  The lies he’d told her a lifetime ago about so easily overcoming what she’d done to him.  Those had been lies with the best intentions behind them, with his driving need to _save her_ behind them, but they were lies all the same.  He averted his eyes and his voice broke, cracking on anguished words.  “God, what’s wrong with me?  Who the hell am I anymore?  It’s my fault, all of it, and you’re…  You shouldn’t…”

She stared at him, reeling and frantically trying to find answers.  She needed to figure out how to help him.  He _needed_ her to help him, and she was aching and hating herself because she still didn’t know how.  She didn’t know how to be what he needed, how to fix him.  She didn’t know how to do for him what he had done for her.  She didn’t know how to be anything other than what she was.

Then she realized the answer to a question that had plagued her for weeks since he’d walked out of her life.  How he could have lied to her about how much she’d hurt him.  Suddenly she understood why he had done what he’d done after she’d shot him.  Why he had ignored how much it damaged him and how hard it was to let that go.  What he’d done…  It wasn’t a lie so much as it was a promise, a promise to be what she needed no matter what.  He loved her, and he’d do anything to protect her.  That was what it was to be strong, to be the one who carried the other through darkness, the one who swallowed down pain to ease the other’s suffering.  Forgiveness.  Selflessness.  He’d taught her so much about that and about love.  Love was give _and_ take.  Love was sacrifice and trust and joy and sorrow and never giving up even when it hurt and especially when things were hard and difficult to see clearly.  And she already was exactly what he needed.  She always had been, from the moment more than a year ago when she’d pulled him through his horrible flashback on their first mission together to right here and right now.  She knew how to help him, how to save him.  She was what he needed because she loved him.

She came around in front of him.  He tried to pull away again, but she wouldn’t let him.  She cradled his face.  “What happened wasn’t your fault.  You could never hurt me, _never_ , not so much that I would ever stop loving you.”  The corner of her mouth turned into a small smile.  “I know you, Steve.  I know who you are.”  Her smile turned larger, warmer.  Soft and entirely sincere.  An echo of his all those nights ago in his bed when they’d given themselves to each other.  “And I still love you.”

He blinked, freeing a tear or two more from his cloudy, exhausted eyes.  She kissed them away before capturing his lips tenderly, gently and with nothing but respect and reverence.  She finished undressing herself before sitting on the edge of the bed and nudging him up onto his feet.  Reaching down, she unhurriedly untied his left boot and then his right before pulling them off.  Then she grabbed the opened front of his jeans and tugged them and his boxers back down his thighs and calves and off his legs.  He was still trembling, but it was lessened, and when she looked up at him, his hunger had returned.  She eased him down on top of her and gently put his hands on her body.  “It’s alright.  You need to feel it.  I know what that’s like.”  She leaned up to kiss him hard, sweeping her tongue between his lips and teeth before drawing him down and inviting him in.  “Take what you need,” she murmured into his mouth.  She hooked her legs around his hips when he tried to get his weight off her.  “Take me.  I’m yours.”

He did.

When it was over and they were both boneless and trembling on the downward slide from the apex of pleasure, Natasha caught her breath and wearily gathered him into her arms.  She held him, keeping him against her, inside her, in _every part of her._ She swept her fingers through his sweat-soaked hair.  She could feel the softness of his lips kissing her throat and his tears hot and wet on her skin.  She could feel his heart pounding against her chest, a wild tempo that heralded release and fading pain and easing desperation.  Her heart was pounding, too, quick and hard with joy and relief and so much love.  _Completion._ “How could you have left me?” she whispered.  He didn’t answer, not beyond shuddering and at long last relaxing into her arms.  She closed her eyes.  “And how could I have let you go?”

* * *

Steve fell asleep right after that, but Natasha didn’t.  She lay awake, her mind hazy and empty.  After he’d drifted off, she’d managed to tug and reposition the musty blankets around them on the lumpy mattress.  They were a fairly pathetic cover against the mounting chill in the night air but something at least.  He was half sprawled over her, his face still pillowed on her shoulder and buried in the warmth of her neck.  He was breathing slowly, peacefully, deeply.  She had a hand down his back, down to where it had been broken.  There was nothing there now, not even a scar.  Just like how there was nothing on his chest where she’d shot him.  All the damage was inside, hidden.  She hoped to God some of it had been healed now.

Of course she realized this wasn’t smart.  They hadn’t set up a watch schedule, and they needed one.  They hadn’t finished securing the mansion.  They hadn’t made a plan of defense or escape.  They hadn’t made contact with Tony.  They were alone here with possibly the whole hell of HYDRA coming after them.  She firmly believed this place was safe; no one would think to look for her this far north, in the middle of the Russian countryside in an abandoned, run-down ballet academy.  They were alright for a while at least.  But assumptions were dangerous, and she knew better than to be placated.  She’d been on the run enough times in her life to realize this was stupid, lazy, and selfish.  Those sorts of weaknesses led to mistakes, and mistakes led to capture or failure.  But she couldn’t will herself to move.  She was exhausted, too, happily trapped in soft lassitude, and having him hot and heavy against her…  She had so missed this.  The smoothness of his skin, warm and perfect.  The softness of his hair.  The weight of his body, so much bigger and stronger than hers, and the way he made her feel cherished and safe.  The way he smelled.  How he tasted.  It was too hard to let this moment go, even as the moment turned into hours.  And Steve had looked so beaten down, so fatigued, like he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in weeks.  She knew she hadn’t, and she hadn’t been the one chasing down ghosts and demons.  He was contented, resting so serenely, and she couldn’t even think of taking that from him.

So she lay there, losing herself in these moments that were escaping her.  There was a flutter low in her belly.  There’d been a lot of that lately.  Maybe she was hypersensitive to it, but every twinge of discomfort or stretch or tingle immediately attracted her attention.  She pushed the blanket aside enough to look down her body past Steve’s dog tags and the fading scar beneath her breasts toward her abdomen, where Steve’s fingers stretched across her left hip.  She reached down, took his hand, and gently drew it upward so that it rested over the place where her abdomen was thickening.  He didn’t stir as she pressed his palm flat there and lay her own hand over his, weaving their fingers together and squeezing gently.  The baby.  _Our baby._   Despite all the anger and fear and doubt she’d suffered since learning she was pregnant, this felt right.  True.  They were together now, and no matter what happened, they could face it that way.  Together. 

When Steve woke up, she’d tell him.  She fell asleep promising herself that and allowing herself to dream about his happy smile and the light in his eyes.

When she woke up, though, it was too late.

The sound of beating rotors broke through her doze, and it made panic cut right into her heart.  She lurched away from the warmth of Steve’s body, falling nearly gracelessly to the floor and scrambling for her clothes where they lay strewn.  She didn’t bother with her bra, pulling her sweatshirt over her head and crawling to the window.  Natasha could barely breathe.  It was the middle of the night, so black outside that she couldn’t even see the ground.  But she could hear the rapid _thud thud thud._   And the sound of engines.  Headlights appeared across the field.  One truck.  Three.  _Six_.  _Oh, my God._   The helicopter was close, and it shone a searchlight directly into the second floor of the mansion.  Natasha dove to avoid the huge, sharp beam, scrambling back to the bedside.  She grabbed Steve’s arm where he still lay sleeping and yanked hard.  “Steve!  _Steve!_ ”

He came awake with a start.  Gasping, he nearly sat up into the light flooding the room, but Natasha’s pulled him over and he was aware enough to realize what was happening.  He crawled across the bed to the floor.  Natasha shoved his clothes at him and got her own pants on, struggling to stay calm.  She bent low, scurrying across the way to the guns and taking them up.  Steve was beside her in a breath, wide awake now with eyes deeply mired in anxious fear.  “Goddamn it,” he whispered.

“I thought you said you weren’t followed,” she hissed.

“I wasn’t!” he returned hotly.

She believed him.  “How the hell did they find us so fast?”

“I don’t know!”  He stuffed one of the handguns into the back of his pants before grabbing the Colt M4.  She took the other.  She took everything she could, actually, and so did he, extra rounds and grenades.  Steve looked wildly out the window, his expression becoming increasingly dismayed as he took stock of what was coming at them.  “We have to get out of here.”

He was right.  A few bounty hunters or HYDRA thugs they could have taken.  But an entire company of soldiers?  That was what was getting out of the trucks pulling up to the mansion.  They might have been Black Widow and Captain America, and part of her desperately wanted to show these bastards _exactly_ what that meant, but they couldn’t risk capture.

And, as bad as this was, it was about to get worse.

“It’s him.”  Steve’s voice was low, strained, but it rattled her core even above the noise of the helicopter and the sound of the soldiers below. 

Natasha came closer, pressing to his flank and staring down out of the window.  Her blood ran cold at the sight of the creature exiting one of the trucks.  It _was_ him.  Stringy blond hair was pulled into a pony tail, whipped and yanked about by the wind from chopper.  He wore a red uniform like blood, blood covering skin that was the color of steel.  His tentacles were already exposed, long and floating around him.  Terror rendered Natasha completely unable to think for a moment.  “He wants me,” she finally whispered.

“Why?” Steve demanded.  “Nat, _why?_ ”

Before she could answer, a loud voice boomed over the mansion from the ground outside through a megaphone.  “Natalia Romanova!”  She knew well who it was.  _Lukin._   “Surrender now!  There’s nowhere to run!”

Steve obviously didn’t agree.  He snatched Natasha’s hand and pulled her back across the room, bent low to the floor to avoid the sweeping light.  Once they were out in the hallway, they stood taller to run faster, the interior walls of the second floor hiding them from the helicopter.  The pounding of their feet on the old floorboards was drowned out by the sound of the soldiers ramming the front door.  Steve’s hold on her hand was tight enough to hurt, but she didn’t care, holding him back just as firmly.  They paused at the top of the steps, watching with wide eyes as bookshelves in front of the main entrance rattled and shook with each strike.  It was holding, but not for long.  Steve pulled her away from the exposure of the foyer, darting back down to the dormitories.  They found an empty room with boarded windows, and he directed her inside.  It was pitch black save for the tiny shards of light piercing through the little gaps in the plywood pieces.  There was a closet in the corner, and he opened the door.  “Hide.”

“No!”

“Don’t argue with me!”  His eyes flashed in fear, in warning, in a silent but powerful plea that she obey him.  She wasn’t helpless, as far from helpless as possible, and this had always been a point of contention between them, even when she’d been simply his partner and not even his friend.  His need to protect her balanced against her need to fight.  Right then and there, it was almost enough to drive what she wanted to say back down.  But it wasn’t.  He needed to know.  _Right now._

His expression softened, and his eyes filled with concern.  “Natasha, please, I need to know you’re–”

 “Steve, I have to tell you something.”  There was no more time, so this had to be it.  She faltered, feeling every second drain away and hating this for how it was happening.  The doors were being rammed louder and louder, every strike seemingly shaking the entire mansion.  The helicopter was circling, searching and searching for her.  Their enemies were all around them.  She felt dizzy and terrified.  “I didn’t want to do it like this…  But…  Steve, I–”  _Tell him!  Just say it!_   “I’m pregnant.”

He stared.  “What?”

She didn’t know what else to say, so she grabbed him and hauled him against her, taking his right hand and pressing it hard over her lower abdomen again, over their baby.  He looked down at that and then up at her.  She nodded, weakly smiling.  Steve’s eyes searched hers, his mouth limp and open.  She watched the emotions play their way across his face, depthless shock turning into wonder and joy before finally settling into absolute, consuming horror when he realized _what_ HYDRA was after.

The sound of the front doors finally bursting open snapped him from his daze.  Suddenly his mouth was on hers, desperate and powerful.  She twined her arms around his neck, trying to forget for the one second everything that had happened and everything that was threatening them.  He pulled away far too soon but came back to press his lips frantically to her forehead.  She could have melted into his arms as he held her tight.  Now she was the one who was shaking.

He looked into her eyes, and when he did, she saw _him_.  Captain America.  “Stay here.  Don’t leave until I come for you.”  Then he was gone.

She knew what he was going to try to do.  Thin their ranks.  Increase the chances of their escape.  She wasn’t sure it would matter, not with Lukin’s monster standing between them and freedom.  She knew better than anyone what Steve could do, how hard he could fight.  She’d seen him stand tall against some of the world’s worst and win.  She put her faith in that.  There was no choice.  She clenched her rifle tighter before following Steve’s orders and climbing into the closet.  It was small and tight and smelled like dust and mold.  She dropped to a crouch and listened.  Seconds dragged away.  There was gunfire, the deep _blam blam_ of a shotgun, and the more staccato sounds of automatic weapons.  She winced, barely able to hear over the roar of her heart.  Barely able to make herself stay still and hidden.  People were shouting roughly in Russian.  One voice rose above the din.  “Kill him!  Find her!”  The helicopter hovered outside, to her right she thought, loud and punishing.  The light pierced the pitch in the room again.  She held her breath, willing it to leave, but it stayed and the mansion vibrated.   _“Kill him!”_

 _Why kill him?_   The terrified question jolted through her head, loud and persistent despite her mounting panic.  _If they want the serum, why kill him?_   She didn’t have time to wonder further.  Something exploded.  The building shook.  Men were screaming, none of them Steve.  She smelled smoke on her next breath.  Through the small gap between the closet door and the wall she saw lights in the corridor outside.  _Shit._   They were probably coming up the smaller staircases on the sides of the building.  Natasha watched the soldiers push the room’s door open and coming quickly inside, guns raised and ready.  She gritted her teeth and waited a moment for them to step closer.  Then she sprung from the closet, pulling the trigger on her rifle and dropping them both in a blink.  She kicked their guns away, grabbing their heavy forms and dragging them even further into the room so she could close the door again.  She paused there, unable to just go back and sit this out.  The sounds of battle were loud.  Down the hallway, she saw Steve at the top of the steps, throwing a man bodily over the railing.  Orange and yellow lights were dancing around him as he fought them like a proverbial one-man army.  He lithely avoided the swipe of a knife, bringing his handgun up to shoot the wielder.  He had a grenade, and Natasha grimaced against the inclement explosion when he tossed it across the way toward the other staircase.  He was attempting to trap the men below and destroy their means of getting up.  It was smart but a temporary deterrent, and it also could end up backfiring if they became trapped on the second floor.

Flushed from his position, Steve jumped down, and she couldn’t see him anymore.  Another explosion rocked the mansion, and she could imagine that beautiful foyer being engulfed in smoke and flame.  She backed away from the door, retreating into relative safety.  At least, what was supposed to be relative safety.

The window shattered behind her, wood and glass spraying into the room.  Natasha shrieked in fear, dropping down as the metal tentacle burst through the hole it had made and careened toward her.  She ducked and rolled to the left, slamming ungracefully into the other wall.  A gray arm was reaching inside the room, knocking glass and wood and plaster aside, ripping at the window frame and the wall around it.  Natasha ground her teeth together, unloading her rifle at the monster clinging to the building outside.  The bullets slammed into him, but when her magazine was spent, she looked with horrified eyes and saw the bullet holes along the muscular forearm close up and vanish like they had never been there at all.

 _Oh, God._   She scrambled toward the door, but she never made it.  The tentacle got her about the waist and yanked her back.  The flood lights from the helicopter were washing over the monster, turning his hair light and his face dark and malignant in the shadows.  Ruby red eyes glowed hungrily, and he hauled her struggling form closer.  Natasha flailed wildly, gasping and grabbing for anything to stop herself.  _No!_   _“Steve!”_

Steve was there like he’d somehow known she needed help.  He charged into the room, across the wooden floor with three huge strides.  He leapt, his knee smashing into the man’s head.  His fist followed, once and twice.  Hard enough to kill.  The attacker’s face snapped back.  Steve had a gun in his other hand, and he jabbed it into the monster’s left fist where it was anchoring him onto the building.  Four loud bangs resounded, the gun’s muzzle flashing.  It didn’t do much damage, but that wasn’t the point.  The thing wailed in frustration as he lost his grip and fell.  Steve kicked him the rest of the way down.  The tentacle around Natasha violently yanked her to the window, but Steve was already wrenching her free of it.  When his hand brushed against the glimmering length of metal, he yelped, recoiling like it burned him.  She caught sight of his right hand and saw that it had.  She was too panicked and terrified to wonder why.

“Run!” he cried, shoving her ahead of him out of the room.  The monster was already climbing back up.  The tentacles returned, this time both of them, spiraling after the two fleeing Avengers.  They punched through the wall into the hallway, spraying Natasha and Steve with drywall, wood, and plaster.  Steve ducked, covering her slight form with his own as he pushed them faster along the corridor.  They passed the foyer, where dozens of black forms – dead soldiers – lay down below.  The room was fully ablaze, fire climbing up the walls and eating through the ceiling.  Somebody shot at them as they ran by but abruptly stopped.  They didn’t want to risk hurting or killing her.

Steve barreled into another rehearsal room, leading with his shoulder and busting the door clear off its hinges.  Natasha caught the glint of silver first and yanked Steve down not a second too soon. The tentacle shot clear through the room, careening through where they’d been standing and hitting the opposite side.  The monster was outside, punching through another window.  And the helicopter was there, bathing everything in awful illumination.  “Surrender yourself, Black Widow!” Lukin bellowed again.  “Do it now!”

“What do we do?” Steve breathed.

She had no idea.  The tentacle retracted violently before slamming in again, shattering the walls and sweeping through the room.  It was reaching, searching, but not finding.  Steve dragged her to the shadowy corner on the left, narrowly avoiding getting hit.  That gave her a different vantage of what was happening outside.  The helicopter was yet again right behind the hulking beast tormenting them, bombarding the room with light to help him with his search.  It wasn’t a large chopper, not the sort common to military.  It did have a minigun, but other than that, it was fairly lightweight.  Something of a plan coalesced in her head.  It wasn’t a very good one, dangerous as all hell and probably unlikely to work, but what choice did they have?  There was no going forward, and if the rest of HYDRA’s thugs got behind them, they’d be trapped.

She glanced at Steve, and she could tell from his narrowing eyes that he’d had the same thought.  Months of working with each other at SHIELD and as Avengers had honed their instincts, their ability to anticipate each other.  “Can you–”

“Yeah,” he answered breathlessly.  The tentacles were retracting again, leaving a rather large section of the wall near the monster crumbling.  “Can you?”

She pulled the handgun from her pants.  “Yeah.”

That was all he needed.  He was charging across the floor after that, jumping over the swipe of one of the tentacles, sliding on his knees under the arc of the next.  Natasha emerged from the shadows where she’d been hiding and pointed the gun at what she could see of the monster’s head.  She shot him.  The bullet did nothing more than get his attention, and it did immediately.  That was what she wanted.  She gritted her teeth, leaping forward from her position into a handstand to avoid the tentacle shooting toward her.  She ran along the right wall and then backtracked to the left, dancing and sprinting and whirling on light feet as the thing ripped the room to shreds in an attempt to catch her.  The ceiling cracked above, and she backpedaled so as not to be struck by a falling chunk of wood.  The tentacle whizzed over her head, so close she could feel it brush her hair.  She rolled to the right, looking with eyes that stung with sweat.

It had worked.  Steve had made it past the monster.  He slammed through the wall and jumped.  His arms pin-wheeled, his legs kicking as if that could propel him through the air.  He sailed clear over the beast’s shoulder, and those tentacles were too tangled up in the room to get to him in time.  It all happened seemingly in slow-motion, Steve leaping dozens of feet, before hitting the landing skid of the helicopter.  The force of his impact knocked the aircraft to the side.  He got his arms around the skid, quickly pulling himself up with little to no leverage.  Natasha saw the copilot going for his gun.  She scrambled away, running to the right to get a better view while avoiding a frustrated swipe of the monster, and shot the man in the head.  The second she spent doing that was costly.  The tentacles were closing around her, surrounding her, trapping her.  She watched outside with wide eyes, blinded for a moment when the helicopter’s floodlight shone right at her.  The pilot was screaming, trying to right the faltering aircraft and pull away as it veered toward the mansion, but he wasn’t fast enough.  Steve ripped the pilot’s door off, reached inside, grabbed the flight stick, and flew right into the building and the monster clinging to its side.

Natasha dove for cover as the rotors sliced into the room.  Huge sections of the walls, floor, and ceiling were cut away before the blades broke.  She winced, quaking in terror and shutting her eyes tight, as the building disappeared in front of her.  Something ignited, and the helicopter exploded.  The beast gave an inhuman roar of pain and frustration.  Heat blasted over her, the force knocking her down and back further.  A seeming eternity passed while she pressed herself to the floor and prayed for it to end.

It did, and when she looked up, a huge section of the side of the mansion had been destroyed.  Things were burning.  Smoke was spilling into the black night.  Rubble was collected in a tall, flaming pile against the building.  Natasha dropped her arms from her head, swallowing hot, acrid air through a dry throat, and clambered to her feet.  _Steve._   She scrambled to the edge where the other walls had once been, looking down frantically.  The helicopter was nothing more than burning wreckage.  The monster was gone, probably buried under all the debris.  And Steve…  He would want her to run.  Get away while she had a chance.

But she couldn’t.  She stood there, frantically scanning the debris, and waited.  She waited even though she could hear the men reforming, struggling to overcome their shock and pursue her again.  She waited even though she could feel every precious second draining away.  She waited.

“Nat, jump down!”

Steve was _right there_ , to her left.  She ran to the edge above him.  In the glow of the fire, she saw him on the ground, covered in dirt and soot.  He must have jumped before the helicopter had hit the building.  Relief left her limbs rubbery for a moment but only that.  She leapt without hesitation because he was there to catch her.  “Are you hurt?” she gasped, grabbing his arms once he set her to the ground.  She took his face and made him look her in the eye.

“No, no, I’m okay.”

She shuddered around a short breath.  That was all they said before they were running away from the light of the fire and into the safety of the blackness.  Engines were starting again, roaring.  She could hear Lukin bellowing, could hear the men scrambling to find them in the yard.  The ground was bumpy and uneven beneath their feet.  Without the light of the stars and moon and away from the raging inferno of the school, it was difficult to avoid the pitfalls.  Steve had her hand clenched in his left, silently leading her, pushing her into pushing herself.  The air was chilly and tight in her lungs, and adrenaline and fear pounded in her veins, but for a moment, she actually entertained the hope they could escape.

They couldn’t.  There was an earth-rattling howl behind them.  The monster exploded from the fiery wreckage, sending chunks of it high into the air.  Natasha gasped, glancing over her shoulder to see him stampeding toward them, finding them easily despite the darkness.  _No, no, no no no–_

Steve yelped and was _gone_.

Natasha whirled, tripping and landing hard on her rear as she tried to see behind her.  The monster had Steve by the arm, dragging him back the dozens and dozens of yards to the house.  Natasha couldn’t breathe, watching Steve struggle, but he wasn’t going anywhere even with all of his considerable strength because the second tentacle first coiled around his throat before encircling his free wrist.  _Oh, God.  God, no!_ She could see lights bobbing, headlights and flashlights.  HYDRA was coming.  “Natasha!”  Steve’s voice was strangled.  His eyes were wide with horror.  _“Natasha, run!_ ”

 _Never._ She wasn’t going to let this thing hurt Steve like it had Clint.  She wasn’t going to leave him to suffer and die.  So she pulled Belova’s knife from inside her sweater and ran _back_.

Steve was putting up a hell of a fight, even with the tentacles wrapped around most of his body.  The monster pinned him onto the ground and glared at him, looming over him.  But he didn’t see Natasha coming until she was leaping into his chest.  She angled herself around his massive form, springing herself off his huge forearm to get onto his neck.  His skin was cold, leathery, unpleasant.  She stabbed down with the knife for leverage, cutting into the thick and unyielding flesh.  The beast yowled in irritation.  “Natasha, run, please…” Steve begged.  He could hardly breathe with the taut coil of metal around his throat.  Natasha didn’t know what she was thinking, doing, _feeling_.  She only knew that she couldn’t let Steve die.

The man snarled and lifted one of the hands he had been using to restrain Steve to reach behind him.  The huge, meaty paw grabbed Natasha by her hair and yanked her off of him like she nothing.  A miserable cry was wrested from her throat as she was tossed lightly, almost carefully to the ground.  Men were suddenly surrounding her, and a dozen guns were on her shivering, prone form.  Steve saw that and redoubled his efforts to get free, kicking hard and nearly knocking the creature back.  The monster shouted again, swore in Russian, and the tentacle around Steve’s right arm yanked away violently.  Natasha watched in absolute horror as it _transformed_ at its end, changing from a grasping appendage into something sharp and spear-like.  “No,” she cried.  “No!  _No!”_

The razor sharp end descended, driving deeply through Steve’s shoulder and into the hard earth beneath him.  He couldn’t get the air into his lungs to do anything more than gasp, his entire body twisting into a miserable spasm under the monster’s unbreakable hold.  He leaned down over Steve again, holding his prey tightly and practically _slavering_ over him.  “I’ve been waiting for this,” the thing hissed.  He grinned, revealing awful, pointed teeth.  “I can _feel_ the life in you.  Yours is like nothing I’ve ever felt before.  I always knew it would be.”  Those red eyes burned in anticipation, and he leaned impossibly low.  Steve went still.  He was gasping, trembling, and he turned his head to the side to get away from the hot breath blasting all over his face.  He squeezed his eyes shut.  The monster dragged his fingers through the blood welling up around the metal embedded in Steve’s body.  He purred in excitement.  “I wonder how it tastes.”

“Stop.”

The command froze the beast.  He snarled unhappily, more an animal than a man, and leaned away from his catch.  Steve opened his eyes.  He caught Natasha’s gaze, breathing heavily and trembling.  She was trembling as well with fear and so much gratitude.  That cool balm of relief swiftly turned miserable with defeat, however, when Lukin walked closer.

Natasha’s heart pulsed in strained anguish as she watched the former general appraise the scene before him.  Lukin watched his monster carefully.  “You will get your fill soon, Arkady.”  The monster didn’t seem convinced.  “But not now.  Not yet.  It’s a fortunate turn of events that we’ve caught him.  That you all failed yet again to kill Captain America.”  The men around them bristled at that, like they were fighting not to pull the triggers of their rifles just to show their leader that weren’t to blame.  Lukin’s eyes narrowed.  “Apparently we can use him.”  What he didn’t say was terrifyingly obvious.  _We can use him against her._

Natasha watched as the monster considered his master’s words a moment more, staring down at Steve’s helpless body at his feet, very obviously wrestling with his orders.  However, he obeyed with an unsatisfied sneer, and the tentacles retracted, the one in Steve’s shoulder coming free with a squelch of blood.  When he was loose, Steve rolled onto his side, coughing and fighting for air.  Natasha scrambled to her feet.  They let her do it.  There was no way for her to run anymore, and they all knew it.  She half crawled, half stumbled over to Steve.  She pulled him up slightly, sliding an arm across his chest to prop him against her.  He gasped miserably, twining his fingers into her sweatshirt and fighting to push himself up further with his good arm.  He was still shaking with pain and fear.  “Nat…”

“Easy.  It’s alright,” she said, even though her own voice shook and her own eyes burned with horrified, hateful tears.  “I’ve got you.”  She covered his head and chest with her own body, holding him close, putting herself between him and their enemies.  They wouldn’t kill her.  They needed her, needed the baby.  She had to protect him.  She had to protect them both.  “I’ve got you.”

“And now I’ve got you, Black Widow,” Lukin said as he and dozens of soldiers surrounded them.  The monster backed away, licking at his reddened fingers as he took his position at his master’s side.  Lukin looked down at his prisoners, at Steve shivering and bleeding against Natasha and at Natasha’s icy, threatening eyes.  His face was placid, calm, but that did very little to hide his satisfaction.  He smiled just like his monster smiled.  Cruel, ugly hunger.  “Take them.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to the amazing [vbprodz](http://vbprodz.tumblr.com) for this lovely artwork!


	10. Chapter 10

They bound Steve to the floor of one of the trucks.  It was fairly obvious this vehicle was specially designed for transporting dangerous prisoners because its walls and ceiling were made of thick metal, soundproof, bulletproof, and inescapable.  Also the restraints into which they locked Steve were clearly unbreakable, even with his enhanced strength.  They were huge and wide, cuffs around his wrists and ankles and metallic straps across his chest and hips and thighs.  He wasn’t going anywhere, held spread-eagle and completely vulnerable.  As she watched the soldiers secure Steve’s bonds at gunpoint, Natasha couldn’t help but angrily wonder who else had been trussed up this way.  That fucking _thing_ that had caught them for Lukin.  The Red Guardian.  The Winter Soldier.  And now Captain America, treated like an animal by men so much weaker than he was.  It was the only way they could contain him.  The only way they could control him.

And he was the only way they could control her.

That was something of a saving grace at least, a small silver lining on these huge, ominous thunderheads looming over them.  They wanted the baby, and that meant they needed Natasha healthy and preferably docile.  Now that they had captured her, they were treating her with kid gloves.  They manacled her hands together but in front of her with a piece of chain that was nearly six inches between long so she could move fairly freely.  Additionally, the chain that secured her to the wall of the truck was loose and lengthy enough that she could easily reach Steve.  They didn’t even want to upset her, it seemed, like stress could endanger the pregnancy.  It was the only advantage she had, and it wasn’t much of one because she had a horrible feeling that every punishment they couldn’t inflict on her for defiance and noncompliance they would gladly inflict upon Steve.  Still, Lukin seemed pleased with the state of his prisoners, nodding to his soldiers as they exited the back of the truck.  The doors were slammed shut.  The engine was turned on.  And then they were driving.

Natasha wasted no time, flying off the bench along the side of the narrow space to reach Steve.  The chains securing her rattled, and she nearly lost her footing as the truck rumbled and jolted oven the sorry excuse for a road outside the burned remains of Shostakov’s mansion.  She knelt beside him, shaking and shaking.  She couldn’t fucking _stop_.  “Steve.  God.”  His shoulder was bleeding badly.  She could see where the end of the tentacle had stabbed right through the muscle.  Red was pooling underneath him and seeping through his shirt, turning the gray a deep, deep purple.  His face was scrunched up in pain, his eyes hazy with it and shock.  There wasn’t anything she could do for him.  Not like this.  “Is it–”

“Hurts,” he whispered.

That seemed pretty obvious.  “Yeah.”  She laid her hand on his forehead, smoothing back the mussed mess of his hair, careful not to hit him in the face with her chains.

“No.  It’s _burning_.  Every time… he touched me with those things…”  Steve groaned, shifting uncomfortably.  “What is he?”

She had no answer for him.  Frustrated and frightened, she grabbed the bottom of her sweatshirt and scooted until she was practically straddling him.  “Deep breath,” she warned, and she pushed down as hard as she could on his oozing shoulder.  He didn’t cry out, but he arched his back as much as he could.  She could see the pounding of his pulse in his throat and feel it in his flesh under her fingers.  The warm wetness seeped through the fabric of her shirt and coated her palm.  “Easy.”  She put as much pressure as she could on it, wincing at how he was quivering underneath her.  She’d seen him hurt far worse than this and seemingly in less pain.  It was a tad alarming.

They didn’t speak for a long time, rushed breaths loud in the silence.  The ruts in the road jostled them, rattling the unused restraints and equipment in the back of the truck.  Eventually Steve stopped breathing quite so harshly.  She pulled her hands up and saw the bleeding was lessened.  She didn’t dare peel the bottom of her shirt entirely away in case that disrupted any clotting that had occurred, so she settled herself as comfortably as she could on top of him.  It was weird and awkward.  She could feel his eyes on her, questioning.  “How long have you known?” he finally asked.

She could have lied.  He would have no way to know if she did.  But she didn’t.  She was tired of lies.  “Since right after you left.”

His eyes filled with so many things.  Surprise.  Alarm.  A touch of hurt.  He realized what she didn’t say.  She’d known for more than a month, and she never called him.  Natasha feared the hints of betrayal she saw creeping about his face, the tightness about his mouth that wasn’t from physical discomfort.  But he didn’t say anything about it.  She didn’t know if it was for her sake or his, but she was grateful nonetheless.  “How, um…  How far…  I mean–”

Despite everything, these awful circumstances and the darkness that lay ahead of them, she smiled weakly at his flustered question.  “Three months.”

He couldn’t get his head around this.  Frankly, neither could she, even after all these days.  “You said that you couldn’t get pregnant.”

“I couldn’t,” she whispered.  “I don’t know how it happened.”

“I don’t understand–”

“Zola predicted this with his algorithm.”  Steve’s face fractured in dismay.  “It wasn’t just me.  It was you and the serum.  It was us together.”  His eyes clouded and he looked away, pale and reeling.  She knew why because it was the same disturbing thoughts that had been plaguing her since Fine had told her about Zola’s suspicions.  HYDRA had anticipated this.  HYDRA had maybe even had a hand in it.  She trusted Fury – _she did_ – but he was the one who’d partnered Steve and her in the first place.  The one who’d sent them to Crimea together.  The one who’d let their relationship grow instead of stomping it out.  It was disturbing in a way she didn’t want to consider.

Steve was silent.  He closed his eyes, shifting uncomfortably, swallowing even more so.  “I’m so sorry,” he finally said.

She didn’t know what he was apologizing for.  For getting her pregnant?  For entangling her in HYDRA’s quest for revenge as though she hadn’t already been tangled up in it anyway?  For loving her in the first place?  “It’s not your fault,” she whispered.

“I’m sorry you had to go through this by yourself.  I should never have left you.  I was… so damn stupid and selfish.”  He shuddered through his next breath.  “And it was for nothing.  We couldn’t find him.”

She didn’t know how she felt about that.  She heard the frustration in Steve’s voice, and that tempered her anger somewhat, but this wasn’t going to heal with one apology.  Just like what she’d done under Brushov’s control hadn’t, no matter how much they pretended it had.  Things that cut this deeply never did.  And she hated the Winter Soldier somehow more than she hated HYDRA, more than Brushov, more than _anyone_.  She hated him for being Bucky Barnes.  She hated him for hurting Steve, for shooting her, for turning their world upside down.  She hated that she had slept with him that one night in Moscow all those years ago.  This had grown and grown in the back of her heart, festering and filthy, and she was _glad_ that Steve hadn’t brought him back.

Steve was always so willing to take the world on his shoulders, especially the blame.  Normally that bothered her, even irritated her sometimes, but at the moment she was just glad for it because it was _him_ again, not a broken shell of the man she’d loved.  “If I’d been there, maybe none of this would have happened.  Clint wouldn’t have been hurt.  I could’ve protected you.  I’m sorry.  And I’m sorry for the things I said.  About you lying to me about Bucky.  And about being angry over what happened between the two of you.”  His voice cracked, faltering with the weight of his emotions, but he took another breath and powered through it.  “I blamed you because I was hurt and… _jealous_ , and it was wrong of me to do that.  So wrong.  I just…  I…  You were right.  I should have trusted you to help me.”

Even though it felt good to be vindicated and absolved, it also hurt to hear his confession because she wasn’t as blameless as he was making her out to be and she knew it.  She could have – _should have_ – called him right away, the night Fine came to her with the news in fact.  He and Sam hadn’t even left the States at that point.  He was right; if he’d been there, so much could have gone differently.  She should have called him every moment after that, but she’d been petty and childish and by the time she’d tried, it had been too late.  Furthermore, the thoughts she’d had, the things she’d considered doing just out of spite…  Suddenly the words came.  She had decided not to tell him days ago, weeks ago, _to never tell him,_ but she couldn’t keep them in.  “I wasn’t going to keep it.  I wanted to end it.  I almost did.”

That came out meeker and guiltier than she wanted it to.  Again, she expected him to be angry.  So angry and so hurt and so very betrayed.  But he wasn’t.  When she gathered enough courage to look at him, she saw he was watching her with worried eyes.  “Why didn’t you?”

She rolled her eyes to the ceiling to battle tears.  It didn’t work.  “Because I knew it would hurt you, and I couldn’t do that.”

“Nat–”

She leaned down, kissing him roughly, letting go of her shirt to cup his face.  Kissing her back was all he could do to comfort her, the muscles of his arms and chest flexing as he pulled uselessly against his restraints.  “I was so scared,” she whimpered into his lips.  The knot of emotions in her chest drew impossibly tighter.  She was so frustrated with it, with how she had no control over herself anymore.  Not over her mind or body.  Not over her heart.  Everything was wild and untamed and unpredictable, and she _despised_ admitting that she was weak or frightened or vulnerable.  But she was, in ways she never _fathomed._   In ways her training and experience couldn’t help her overcome.  “I needed you.  _I needed you._ ”

“I know, love.  I’m so sorry.  I wish I could change what happened–”

“I’m still scared,” she admitted weakly.  “Steve, what if they–”

“They won’t,” he said, though the heaving of his chest beneath her in frustration and fear said otherwise.  He leaned up as far as he could, taking her mouth again.  She sighed, sliding her lips over his, letting herself melt into this little pleasure.  She pulled away and drew a shaking breath, bracing her forehead to his.  “It’s not gonna happen, Nat.  Whatever they’re want, they won’t get.  We’ll get through this.”  He smiled a weak smile.  “I promise.”

She gave a heavy breath, somehow gathering a fraction of her composure.  “And you always keep your promises.”

“Sure do.”

She wanted to laugh at that.  So desperately she did.  This was strong and easy, so much as he had been before HYDRA had gotten its hands into him and pulled him apart.  He sounded like the man she’d fallen in love with.  Captain America.  Invincible and unstoppable and wonderfully naïve and so damn stubborn.  She couldn’t manage it, though.  She couldn’t do anything more than breathe and keep her eyes closed.  They stayed still for a long time, faces together, tenderly kissing whenever that small distance became too much.  She tried to lose herself in this because facing what was happening, where they were being taken and by whom, was too much.

“I need you to promise me something, though,” he finally said.  “No matter what happens to me, you have to stay strong.”  Her lips trembled into a frown.  “Sam and Tony know I was looking for you.  And they know HYDRA was after you.  They’ll come.”

“Steve–”

“They’ll come for us.  For you.  You just gotta hang on until then.”

She shook her head vehemently before wrapping her arms around him as much as she could and burrowing her face into his neck.  She could hear what he wasn’t telling her.  _Don’t let them use me against you._ “No.  I can’t do it.  I can’t watch them hurt you again.”

Steve gave a shaking sigh, his head thudding back down onto the cold floor of the truck.  She shifted, trying to keep her weight off his wounded shoulder while staying as close as she could.  She laid down on his chest, listening to the fast, shaky beat of his heart.  She could feel him struggling to stay calm, muscles taut and miserable as he yet again tested his bonds.  His breath came out in a wavering gust against her hair.  “Still got my dog tags?” he whispered.

She reached a hand up to her lower chest where the comforting weight of them was against her scar.  She grabbed them through her shirt and held tight.  “Yes.”

“Good.”  She felt a shiver of pain go through him, one he was trying to stifle.  “I want you to have ’em.”

“That’s sweet,” she commented dryly.  She nuzzled deeper into his side.  “But you could have picked a more romantic time to give them to me.”

“You should talk.  You’re the one who just told me I’m going to be a father in the middle of a firefight.”

She couldn’t help but be a tad ashamed at that (not that it was her fault), but the ire in his voice was light and fake.  He was teasing her.  It was so good that her throat constricted in joy.  And the way he said that…  _A father.  A father to her baby._   This suddenly felt real again, so much so that it was hard to breathe.  “You want fluffy and sweet?” she managed in a thick voice.  “Something tells me you might be in the wrong business, Rogers.”

“Just want you,” he murmured.  “Never letting you go again.”

She closed her eyes, torn between wanting to find some hope in that and fearing that any hope at all would only hurt her in the end.  “You know what I want?” she whispered.  He grunted.  “I want to go home.  Back to your place in DC.  I want everything back the way it was when it was just you and me…”  How simple things had been then.  Sleeping and playing and laughing and loving.  It seemed like an impossible dream, one that was gone forever.  A moment in time that had no past and no future.  “Nothing could touch us.  Nothing hurt us.  No liars and traitors.  No HYDRA.  No Red Room.  No Winter Soldier.  Nobody but you and me.  I want that again.”

He didn’t say anything to that for a while.  She closed her eyes and clung to the memories.  His warm, soft bed.  Laying on him like this and listening to him tell her war stories about Bucky and the Howling Commandos.  It was so vivid she could almost feel the smoothness of his sheets, the smell of his fabric softener and the faint hints of the soap he always used light on his skin, mingling with scents she knew were her own.  “We can’t go back.”  His quiet voice was distant with thought, a sad rumble against her ear.  “Peggy told me once that when your world is changing sometimes the best you can do is start over.”  She closed her eyes.  She remembered that in one of the letters Peggy had written Steve while he’d been lost in the ice.  “When we get out of this, that’s what we need to do.”

 _When.  Not if._   It always struck her how he could be so naïve yet so wise at the same time.

The truck had stopped bouncing quite so roughly.  They were on a smoother road now.  A highway perhaps.  She felt nauseous again, cold and anxious.  “Where do you think they’re taking us?”

He sighed.  “Don’t know.”  _Don’t want to know.  No place good._   “They’ve got something bad planned, all of this aside.  Something about a Red Army and ships of poison headed to the US.”

“Poison?  What poison?”

“I don’t know.  Hopefully the others have a handle on it.  It’s not like we can do much here.”  It was tense and quiet before he asked the question they’d both been dreading.  His voice was barely above a whisper.  “Why do they want the baby?”

She closed her eyes, tightening her hold on his dog tags with one hand and his shirt with the other.  _The serum._   That was the obvious answer, but it wasn’t the whole story.  If they wanted the serum, they had Steve now.  There wasn’t anything a baby could offer them that was better than that.  But Steve seemed more like leverage against her, and that didn’t make sense.  Were they after the chance to raise their child to be a soldier for HYDRA?  Maybe.  Lukin certainly excelled at and enjoyed turning men into weapons.  But that would require years, decades even, and whatever this was, it seemed significantly more pressing.  There had to be another reason, and she wracked her brain trying to figure it out, but it quickly became too much to stand.  Images and fears too horrific to contemplate tugged at the edges of her mind, but she refused to succumb to their tortures.  _It doesn’t matter why they want it.  They’re never taking it.  Never._

Steve’s soft voice drew her from her thoughts.  “We could go somewhere else.”

She didn’t take his meaning for a moment.  “What?  Like a vacation?”

“Sure.  Why not?  Never been on one before.”

Neither had she, honestly.  She couldn’t recall ever in her life traveling for fun rather than for a mission.  Inexplicably she imagined it, and like her memories it felt ridiculously good to lose herself in that, even if a niggling voice in the back of her mind told her it was stupid to even dream.  She rubbed her hand over his chest, whole-heartedly sinking into the idea for one blissful moment.  “Where do you want to go?”

“Dunno.  Don’t really care as long as it’s far away from here and with you.”  She felt his smile.  “Someplace warm.  So you could, uh, wear one of those skimpy bikini things.”

She couldn’t believe him.  Some part of her knew he was flirting with her just to ease the tension of this hellish nightmare, but it was so sweet and so him.  She could practically hear the blush in his voice.  He was still so inept, so flustered by her, and it brought her back months ago to when she was intoxicated on the power she had over him.  “You want me to wear something like that?  Pregnant?  Why, Captain Rogers.  That’s surprisingly inappropriate of you.  And kind of kinky.”  Not that pregnant women couldn’t be sexy.  But still.  She was trying to be coy, but she winced as she really thought about it.  Her belly rotund and swollen with a child, her body ruined by stretching and swollenness and weight gain.  It was disturbing, frightening, and unpleasant.  “Bye-bye, bikinis,” she muttered disdainfully.

“You’d still look beautiful.  You’re always beautiful, Nat.”

God, this was silly and he was completely ridiculous.  But she closed her eyes again and greedily imagined it, the two of them alone on some beach somewhere, nobody around for miles and miles.  Silver waves lapping white shores.  Her on a towel, taking in the sun and watching him swim.  Him emerging from the surf, wet and golden and sun-kissed, and jogging up to her with a huge smile on his face before collapsing between her legs to rain kisses all over her stomach.  The image came unbidden, surprisingly sweet and exciting, and she shivered despite herself.  “You know, the last time we went to a tropical island by ourselves, it didn’t go down so well.”

He grunted.  “No, I guess not.”

“You guess?”

That blush again.  It was practically a tangible thing with him.  She’d missed it so fiercely.  “I, uh…  Well, I never told you but I had the hots for you somethin’ terrible after that.  For months.  You have no idea.”  She did, in fact.  Very much so.  “It was a relief gettin’ off that island, in more ways than one.”

She grinned, so pleased with that.  “You didn’t need to tell me, you know.  I noticed.”

“You did?”

“Steve, seriously.  Why do you think I spent so much time flirting with you after that?  It was obvious.  And… sweet.”

“And cruel.  You like watching me squirm and make a fool of out myself.  You’re always torturing me.”

She smiled again, grasping his shirt a little tighter.  “It’s a hobby.”

They were quiet for a while.  The motion of the truck, as harsh as it had been, turned lulling.  He sighed slowly.  “You should sleep.”

That brought her back to their current miserable situation.  “Like this?”

She could feel him make some sort of aborted attempt at a shrug.  “Don’t see much of a choice.”

He was right, of course.  She was exhausted, aching from the fight and so much turmoil.  There was no way they could escape at the moment, and they were being left alone.  The truck would have to stop for the soldiers to come to them.  This was probably the closest thing to peace they were going to get.  There was no sense in squandering it.  “Okay,” she whispered into his flank.

“Okay.”  She closed her eyes, trying not to think, trying not to feel, trying not to notice that he was rigid and obviously in pain and probably afraid and really uncomfortable.  She wished there was something she could do to comfort him, but there was nothing, nothing beyond staying close.  And he seemed more intent on comforting her.  “I love you,” he softly said.

She smiled faintly.  “I love you, too.”  That seemed to help them both.  He exhaled slowly, relaxing into the floor, and so did she.

At some point over the next few hours, she did sleep.  It was miserably unpleasant.  Her back and hip hurt, and jostling around aggravated the persistent queasiness assailing her.  But she slumbered off and on, fitful and restless, and found Steve doing much the same.  It was hard to tell how much time was passing; this cell was dark and disorienting.  She came awake from her most recent uneasy doze when Steve groaned hoarsely.  He stifled it, like he was realizing he was disturbing her and trying his damnedest to suffer in silence.  She leaned up instantly, ignoring the flare of stiffness in her neck.  “What?” she gasped.  “What is it?”

“Shoulder,” he gritted out.  His hands clenched into fists above the cuffs, and he squirmed and struggled uselessly.  “Hurts real bad.”

She peered closer in the dim light, pulling the bloody cloth of his shirt away to get a better idea of what was going on.  The slice was deep and wide but clean.  It probably needed stitches because it was still weeping blood in a fairly steady stream, and it was inflamed and looked like it hurt as badly as he said.  None of that was unusual.  For anyone else.  “Shouldn’t this have stopped bleeding by now?”

His eyes were hazy, squinting in confusion.  “It’s still bleeding?”

“Yeah.”  The injury was serious, but it was still simply a flesh wound.  The serum should have been well into healing it by now.  It was hours later, and it looked… well, like it had only been hours, rather than a day or more.  Puzzled and increasingly worried, she carefully fingered the gash, inspecting it more closely.  Steve shifted uncomfortably, jabbing his teeth into his lower lip until it was red.  She didn’t see any sign of infection or poison, but _something_ must have inhibited the serum, and God if _that_ wasn’t terrifying…

The truck suddenly stopped.  Natasha sat up, eyes wide and breath locked in her throat.  Everything turned, nearly pitching her to the right over Steve’s body.  She managed to right herself.  Steve started struggling anew, yanking on the cuffs around his wrists and ankles, bucking upward to try and dislodge the straps.  Nothing gave.  “Don’t,” Natasha warned.  “Don’t hurt yourself.”

The truck’s engine revved up, but wherever they were headed, they weren’t going there as quickly.  The road turned uneven again.  Natasha grabbed Steve’s hand, staying on her knees and glancing around wildly even if it was pointless.  She couldn’t see where they were or where they were going.  She looked down at Steve again and again, but he was as tense, frightened, and helpless as she was.  They didn’t speak, barely breathed, waiting.  Eventually the truck stopped again, for good this time.  “What–”

“Shh,” Natasha hissed.  She rose gracelessly to her feet, walking to the rear doors of the truck as much as she could before the chains binding her to the wall were taut.  She was still a good six feet from the back.

Outside men were talking.  Doors were slamming.  Boots were scuffling in what sounded like dirt.  Natasha held still, listening, eyes roving through the shadows.  Her heart was booming and a cold sweat coated her skin.  She looked back at Steve, but he couldn’t move enough to even see her.  She could see his fingers curling into frustrated fists and releasing rhythmically.  Minutes dragged away, and nothing happened.  Where were they?  What was happening?

Finally, the doors banged open.  Natasha winced at the bright sunlight blasting inside the back of the truck.  She automatically backpedaled.  Dark forms appeared, men with guns and Lukin.  She scrambled to get back to Steve.  “No,” Lukin said.  Already the thugs were hopping up into the back of the truck, rifles pointed at the two Avengers.  They pushed past Natasha and pointed their guns directly at Steve.  Tied down as he was, there was nothing he could do to protect himself, and that was horrendously obvious.  “You come with us.  He stays.”

Natasha felt her blood run cold.  “Why?”

Lukin folded his arms coolly over his chest.  “I would like you to see something.”

“I’m not interested.”  Steve’s strangled groan was the result of her defiance.  She ripped away in time to see one of the soldiers ram the butt of his gun a second time into the bleeding mess of his shoulder.  Steve yanked his arm strong enough to bend the cuff, but it didn’t give.  The soldier raised his gun to hit him again.  Natasha whipped back to Lukin, lifting her bound hands to him.  “Alright!  Fine.”

Lukin smiled smugly and nodded to his men.  They backed away from Steve, but they didn’t lower their guns, staring warily at the helpless super soldier like he might break free and attack at any moment.  That was probably damn near impossible, but Natasha ardently hoped for it all the same, and she was darkly pleased that they were scared.  One of the thugs unlocked her chains from the wall and led her over to Lukin like she was an animal on a leash.  “Leave her alone!” Steve yelled.  No one listened to him.  He struggled anew, and this time Natasha didn’t try to stop him.  “Natasha!  _Natasha!”_

The door of the truck was slammed shut, muffling Steve’s cries, after she was pushed down to the ground.  Lukin stared at her, his eyes flicking over her blood-stained clothes and pale face unhappily.  “You might want to think about cooperating,” he informed her.  “You will be in our company for quite a while, so I suggest you make things easier on yourself.”

Natasha said nothing, gritting her teeth.  She squinted in the bright daylight, taking in where they were.  It wasn’t at all what she was expecting.  They were simply pulled off the side of a country road.  The sounds of cars driving on the highway were loud, so the main road was close.  Fields of long, autumn grasses rolled all around them.  She saw this was one truck in a caravan of almost a dozen vehicles, all black or silver and unmarked.  Theirs was the largest, a small semi flanked by vans and other trucks.  Armed men were everywhere, soldiers dressed in black or fatigues and bearing automatic weapons.  They were more than three dozen strong.  Escape would unfortunately be rather difficult, even if she could get free and free Steve and somehow get out of the truck.  And they were in the middle of nowhere.  Somewhere south, between St. Petersberg and Moscow perhaps?

What were they doing here?

The men flanking her pulled her forward.  A cool breeze wove its way through her tangled hair as she lowered her head and stared at the road under feet.  They were directing her out into the field.  Natasha stayed calm, even though her heart was racing in fear.  Confusion settled like ice in her stomach.  “Yuri should not have let you go,” Lukin commented as they walked.  The grass rolled like waves in the wind, and dried earth crunched under their shoes.  Where were they taking her?  “But he was always weak.  And a fool.  He believed the mind could be trained to ignore the heart, that an asset’s identity could be reformed rather than eradicated.  That was a fallacy.  For a man so driven to eliminate weaknesses, he was beset by them, particularly his compassion for you.”  Lukin’s eyes were steely.  Evil.  About as evil as likening Brushov’s cruelty to affection.  “Your heart has gotten you into quite a bit of trouble.  If you had been mine, I would have wiped your mind clear over and over again until there was simply nothing left.”

“Is that what you did to the Winter Soldier?” she asked coldly.

Lukin grunted, not quite in amusement.  “Why should a weapon have even the capacity to feel or remember or think?  Yuri wanted to tame those things, arrogant fool he was.  And you are a shining example of his failure.”

She couldn’t stand this bullshit.  “You should be thanking him,” she seethed.  “His failure got you Captain America’s baby.”

He actually smiled.  She’d never seen him do that before.  The few times Brushov had had dealings with Lukin, it had been cold and tense, like two competing factions forcing a ceasefire to unite against a common enemy.  Lukin had had his projects, his _pets_ , and Brushov had had his.  Obviously they shared a past together that went deeper than what Natasha had known.  She wasn’t sure she gave a damn.  “Don’t pretend that you care nothing for him or for the child he gave you.  You forget, Black Widow, that I taught Yuri a great deal of the techniques he employed on you.  I can see through every one of your masks.”

“What do you want?” she demanded, tired of these games.  “If I agree to cooperate, will you let Rogers go?”

Lukin’s amusement only grew.  “You foolish girl.  There is _nothing_ you can offer me to let Captain America walk away from this,” he said with half a chuckle.

Her frustration won over her control.  “You can’t force me to have this baby,” she snapped.  “I might be your prisoner, but–”

“But what?  You’ll kill yourself before you let Rogers’ child fall into our hands?  Kill the child?”  That was what she had meant to say, but she knew instantly it was groundless.  Lukin knew it, too.  There was a smug glimmer in his eyes.  “The Black Widow of the Red Room would follow through with that threat beyond any doubt.  That Black Widow would have _never_ become so compromised as to be impregnated by the enemy in the first place.  But you?  The Black Widow of Nick Fury’s SHIELD?  Of the Avengers?  You’re a shade of who you were.”  Natasha stiffened.  “You would just as soon kill yourself as you would kill him.  And we know how well you completed your final mission for Yuri.”

“Fuck you,” she snarled.  _“What do you want?”_

“Right now, I simply want you to see what it is you’re here to fix,” Lukin answered evenly.  They’d stopped walking and were now some distance from the road.  She looked where he was gesturing and saw a group of people cowering at gunpoint.  They were shaking, sobbing, random men and women dressed in civilian clothes, mundane coats and hats and gloves.  Innocents who had seemingly been plucked from the roads around them.  She glanced back over her shoulder at the trucks and saw that, indeed, there were cars toward the front of the long line of HYDRA’s caravans.  Sedans and SUVs that Lukin’s soldiers were driving away, one at a time.  Natasha couldn’t make sense of this.  What…

“Recreating a super soldier has been an unattainable dream for us, as you well know,” Lukin explained.  “You were part of one of our many failed attempts to realize that dream.  And it has not been us alone.  HYDRA’s attempts.  SHIELD.  Other regimes across the globe for decades.  Every effort has ended in failure.  I finally understood why a few years ago.”  There was a loud roar that turned Natasha’s blood to ice water.  “We have all blindly followed Erskine’s fundamental assertion that the caliber of the man creates the caliber of the weapon.  We devoutly believed this because it led to his one and only success: your perfect Captain America.  So we foolishly kept trying to craft our soldier from good, as if using a good man is essential in success.  Sergeant Barnes.  Alexei Shostakov.  Even you and so many of your peers.  Create the perfect weapon and break his mind afterward.  We kept doing this, when what we _should_ have been doing is following the example of Erskine’s greatest failure.”  Natasha didn’t understand that at first.  Then she realized what he was saying.  _The Red Skull._   “Pure evil can only come from evil.”

Another roar seemingly shook the day.  Her eyes widened as the monster emerged from the back of another truck.  He was agitated, shouting unintelligibly.  The soldiers around him were backing away, guns raised for all the good that would do.  He seemed like he wanted to attack, but he didn’t, turning instead and advancing toward them.  Natasha couldn’t think, could hardly breathe, unable to even wonder what in the world was happening any longer.  The hulking brute came closer and closer, panting, shaking with his skin covered in a glistening, wet sheen – _what’s the matter with it_ – and looked at Lukin.  Lukin nodded, and the beast headed toward the assembled civilians without delay.  Lukin stepped closer to Natasha, but she barely noticed she was so horrified at the awful sight of that monster towering over the screaming people.  The tentacles slithered out of his arms, grotesque as they rose up in the air like snakes poised to strike.  The people cowered, eyes wide, faces white, staring in abject horror.  _No.  No!_   “Let them go,” she begged.

“No.  Omega Red needs to feed,” Lukin softly announced.

The tentacles struck.  Natasha closed her eyes, wincing at the agonized screams from the poor people.  There was moaning and gasping, the sound of air moving and bodies falling.  When she looked again, all of the victims lay dead in the grass, gray and shriveled like they’d been exsanguinated, like their lives had been sucked completely from their bodies.  They’d been nothing more than sheep brought to the slaughter.

Omega Red turned to her.  He was shivering, euphoric, dazed with the rush of the energy he’d just taken like an addict reaching a long sought-after high.  Slowly his tentacles retracted, slithering through the grass and back up into his body.  He smiled, and his eyes glowed like blood.  This was the first time she’d seen him like this, with the time to truly _look_ at him.  He was awful, the stuff of nightmares, bulging veins and hideous skin and a maniacal glint to his gaze.  He towered over her, and she hardly resisted the urge to try and run.  His huge hand grabbed her sweatshirt and lifted her closer to him.  “You smell almost as good as he does,” he hissed.  The gross grayness of his tongue extended to lick along Natasha’s cheek where she’d been cut during the fight at the mansion.  The tiny wound stung.  “Taste almost as good, too.”

She couldn’t breathe her chest was so tight with panic.  Omega Red smiled that awful, anticipatory smile of his.  “Arkady,” Lukin warned.  The monster looked at him, growling low in his throat, but again he obeyed.  Natasha was gently set back onto her feet.  Then he turned in with a snarl and stalked back to the caravan.  Lukin sighed.  “You’ll have to excuse him,” he said with mock seriousness.  “He’s been waiting quite some time for this.”

“I… I don’t understand,” Natasha admitted.  “You want me to fix…”

“He is the culmination of the evolution from Erskine’s original work through the Red Room to now.  All of our failed attempts to recreate the super soldier serum.  All of our efforts to somehow combine the samples of it with our own versions.  Our _lesser_ versions.  The weak derivative that flows through your veins and every iteration of it.  For seventy years, we have had nothing but failure after failure.  Finally, this last attempt birthed an abomination that has what we thought was limitless power.”  _Omega Red._   Natasha felt sick.  She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.  This monster…  _The culmination._   The final step.  The end result of what Erskine had started in 1943, through the Winter Soldier and the Red Room and the Red Guardian.  Lukin sighed.  “But, unfortunately, we soon discovered it is not limitless.  He possesses a fatal flaw.  The serum that drives him also degrades his body, causing cellular instability.  It’s a weakness, his reliance on the biochemical energy of others to stabilize his own metabolism, and it’s becoming progressive.  More than that, it’s becoming an addiction, one no longer satisfied by the life force of an average person.  We are reaching the point where we can longer sate him, not even with dozens of sacrifices at once.  We made countless attempts to marry Erskine’s serum with his DNA, attempts we thought would succeed because we finally had pure samples supplied by SHIELD in return for our… _loaning_ them the Winter Soldier on a more permanent basis.”  _HYDRA.  HYDRA gave them Steve’s blood.  HYDRA traded them Steve’s blood to get access to Barnes._ “Unfortunately, it seemed the Erskine’s serum and the Red Room derivatives were fundamentally incompatible.”

Lukin sighed again.  “I was ordered to kill Rogers.  He has certainly proven himself to be a problem.  I refuse to be another… what is it the Americans say.  Another notch in his gun belt.  Brushov.  Pierce.  Fools, both of them.  However, he may serve a better purpose.  Capturing him was actually a rather fortuitous, if unexpected, turn of events.  We now have a source of extremely potent, high quality biochemical energy capable of regenerating itself that we can use to feed Rossovich’s appetite.”  _Oh, God._   “That will hopefully keep him functioning, at least until we can determine how to permanently remedy the problem.  And we will find an answer.  Nature has already provided it for us.”  _It’s not possible…_

Lukin smiled faintly before all of his softness completely vanished.  “I suggest you stay calm, Black Widow.  The child inside you is the _only_ instance in history of Erskine’s serum successfully replicating itself, successfully _combining_ itself with that of the Red Room.  We can ill afford to lose it.”  _Please, God!_   “I sincerely doubt all this stress is good for you or the baby.”  He said that like he wasn’t the one who was causing it, who was torturing them and twisting their world upside down again.  “Trust me when I tell you that you cannot stop us.  The Red Room will always own you, you and every part of you.”  He nodded to his men.  “Take her back.  Let’s move on.”

Natasha was lost, barely walking, barely _breathing_ as the soldiers brought her back to the truck.  They forced her inside.  Steve struggled anew at the noise, fighting to look back at her.  “Nat?  Nat!”  Lukin’s men rebound her to the wall and left them alone.  The doors were slammed shut, plunging them back into darkness.  “Nat?  Are you alright?”  The truck engine roared to life.  Outside men were barking orders.  The caravan was moving again.  “Nat!  Talk to me!  Please!”

She collapsed onto her knees beside Steve.  She could barely see him, her eyes still adjusted to the light, but the wild fear and worry in his eyes was bright and unmistakable.  Natasha glanced up and down his body, as bound and trapped as he had been when she’d left him.  They hadn’t spared his life because they wanted the serum.  They hadn’t done it to control her even.  They’d done it so he could be a goddamn _battery_ for their Frankenstein.

And she was to be an incubator for their new serum.

Bitter anger surged up her throat, and she thought she was going to be sick.  She sunk down on him, sobbing desperately.  “Nat,” Steve hoarsely whispered.  His voice was thickening with his own grief.  He was struggling again, pulling on the cuffs.  His need to hold her was a physical thing, tension drawing his muscles rigid.  “What happened?  Please tell me what they said.  Did they hurt you?”  She couldn’t speak.  She couldn’t.  It was so much, so awful…  “Natasha, please…”

“It’s alright,” she managed around a weeping breath.  “It’s alright!”

“Nat, tell me…  _Please…_ ”  She took his plaintive whisper into her mouth.  It was hot and desperate and strong with the taste of tears.  Then she tucked her face into his neck, clinging tight, and felt the frantic, powerful thrumming of his pulse under her lips.  She couldn’t stop kissing him.  And she couldn’t stop crying.

* * *

Natasha eventually wore herself out and slept, deep and dreamless.  It was a relief, a small, meager relief.  She awoke to Steve’s prodding.  “We stopped again,” he whispered worriedly.  She blinked her swollen eyes and leaned up from his body.  It was so dark again.  She could barely see the outline of Steve’s face beneath her, but his charged breath was painfully loud in the silence.  She scooted away, aching, dizzy, and nauseous.  Steve yanked on his restraints again, rattling them.  “Nat, listen to me.  Look at me.”  She felt dazed and lost, but she did.  His eyes were wide, filled with terror but not for himself.  For her.  “I need to hear you say it.  Whatever they do to me, you stay strong.  Do you hear me?  I need your promise now.”

“Steve,” she whispered.

_“Please.”_

“I–”

The doors banged open.  A flood of soldiers stormed inside.  Natasha watched in helpless horror as they unfastened her chains from the wall and took her away from Steve.  “Get your goddamn hands off of her!  Natasha!”  His shout escalated into a cry, but she couldn’t see what was happening to him.  And she didn’t fight as they escorted her away.  There was no sense now, not with Omega Red standing at the back of the truck and waiting.  They pulled her gently down into a cement garage, large and filled with military vehicles. 

Lukin was there, watching dispassionately.  “Take Rogers to a cell.”

There was a loud scuffle from inside the truck.  From here beside Lukin, she had a better view of what was happening.  The minute Steve was loosed from the restraints, he sprung up like he hadn’t spent the better part of a day completely immobile.  The men scrambled to grab him.  Someone screamed, and the truck shook as a body hit the interior wall with a crunch.  Another black-garbed thug was tossed clear over their heads with a wail.  “Arkady,” Lukin softly ordered.

Omega Red ground his teeth together and hopped up into the back of the truck.  Natasha couldn’t see much past his hulking mass.  She was numb, lost, as the monster brought Steve down like he was nothing.  He used only his hands, twisting Steve’s arms behind his back and holding them there with one and fisting his hair with the other.  Steve was still fighting despite that, despite Omega Red bodily carrying him from the back of the truck and throwing him down onto the cold concrete floor of the garage at Lukin’s feet.  Steve hit hard, tried to roll to his knees, but Omega Red was already there.  “You son of a bitch!” he snarled at Lukin, scrambling to try and get to Natasha, but it was no use.  Omega Red knocked Steve back down, planting a massive foot on his chest and pinning him.  Steve was pushing up on it as hard as he could, but even with all of his strength he couldn’t dislodge it.

Omega Red leaned down over his captive again, and Steve stopped fighting, his eyes widening in fear as the monster loomed over him.  That awful look came to his face again, so insatiably _hungry_.  “Arkady,” Lukin called again.  There was a warning tone to his voice now.  It took some effort, but Omega Red ripped his eyes from Steve.  Lukin shook his head slightly.  “Not yet.  Take him to a cell and keep him there.  Wait.”

The beast snarled, violently frustrated, and reached down a huge hand to grab Steve by the throat.  As useless as it was, Steve lashed out, kicking and trying to pry open the hand choking him.  He coughed, and his shouts were strangled to whimpers.  It was cowardly and weak, but Natasha couldn’t watch anymore.  She closed her eyes.  Even then she saw those bodies, white and ruined in the grass.  Omega Red walked inside the doors ahead of them, carrying Steve away from her.  The company of soldiers followed.  A few stayed behind to flank Natasha and Lukin.  The ex-general waited until his servant and men were gone down the hallway before following.  He had a hand tight around Natasha’s elbow and pulled her along with him.

They walked down the gray hallways for a bit.  At a fork shortly into the trip, the soldiers and Omega Red went left.  Lukin forced her to go right.  Natasha walked silently with her eyes on her shoes.  There was a quiet voice in the back of her heart demanding that she fight, but it was too weak now to drive her into any sort of defiance.  It wasn’t simply the hopelessness of their situation and the awful enormity of Lukin’s plans.  It was the memories, memories of being a girl led through halls like these, looking up at Brushov at her side as he took her deeper and deeper into his nightmares.  She’d sworn to never be back here, to never feel this trapped and helpless again.  _Vulnerable._   She’d promised herself to never come back to the Red Room.  After Clint had brought her into SHIELD and shown how evil her life had been, after becoming an Avenger, after falling in love with Steve…  The fact that she was like this…  _The Red Room owns you.  You and every part of you._

They reached a massive laboratory.  It was brightly lit, glaringly so, with white tile floors.  Everything was sleek, sterile, and well maintained.  There were advanced machines everywhere, scanners, computers, and other pieces of equipment she couldn’t name.  A huge set of restraints was in the corner of the room.  Was that where they had made Omega Red?  She couldn’t make herself examine the area closely enough to find out.

A man and his slew of assistants came to meet them at the door.  When he saw Natasha, he smiled.  He was perhaps as old as Lukin, with a genteel face and sharp green eyes.  Thick red hair streaked with white topped his head, and his neatly trimmed beard was cinnamon and suave.  “You must be Natasha,” he said in greeting.  “Welcome to your home for the foreseeable future.  I apologize for the Spartan accommodations, but I imagine you’re quite accustomed to militaristic décor.”  He spoke very clean, precise English.  He was obviously well-educated, an academic sort if the appearance of his primly pressed suit was any indication.  And he was German, not Russian.  _HYDRA._   She said nothing, not even possessing the fire anymore to resist.  The man smiled, reaching a hand forward to press it against her lower belly.  She jerked at the intrusion and tried to pull away, but Lukin held her firm.  “No need to worry,” the man admonished.  His words were as gentle as his probing fingers.  “We won’t hurt you.”

She felt cold, _violated_ again, as he examined the swell in her stomach.  He retracted his hand after a moment and smiled a disarming smile.  “Let’s clean you up, yes?  A good wash.  Something to drink and eat.  And we’ll take a look.”

“We need confirmation,” Lukin coolly reminded from behind her.

She was being directed by the scientist (doctor?) deeper inside the complex.  There were nurses waiting.  “And we will get it.  The blood samples we received from Fine should be enough anyway.”

“They’re not,” Lukin returned.  “There’s far too much at stake.”

“I can determine paternity beyond a doubt with an amnio, if that would make you feel better.”

Lukin was grinding his teeth.  That wasn’t overt, but the dark glare of his eyes spoke volumes of his frustration.  “What about the serum?”

The doctor nodded at the nurses.  One of them set to removing Natasha’s chains.  A moment later, she was free.  She could have attacked.  Fought.  _Run._   But she didn’t.  There was no way out now.  “Unfortunately, my friend, not even we can rush the natural course of things.  The fetus requires time to gestate.”  He said that flippantly.  The nurses led her behind a curtain.  There was a shower there, and another woman waiting with scissors.  They pulled the curtain between them and the men before starting to cut Natasha’s dirty, blood-stained clothes right off her body.

“Can’t you extract the serum now?”

She grimaced at that, closing her eyes as they pulled her shirt away.  The doctor looked displeased.  “I could, but I wouldn’t advise it.  The procedure would definitely end the pregnancy, and that would be a monumental waste of potential.”

“Your dreams of scientific advancement are not my primary concern.”

“They should be.  There is much more at stake here than just repairing Omega Red.  I know that is what Malik desires most of all, but we shouldn’t be so impulsive.”

“Then force an early birth.”  Lukin sounded worried.

“You’re not listening.  Rushing this will endanger the child.    Zola indicated this conception had a high probability of occurring, but it’s only that: a probability.  And even if it came to inducing a premature labor, we are still at least thirteen weeks from the point where the child stands a reasonable chance of survival outside the womb, assuming it develops at the normal rate.”

“Malik will not be pleased,” Lukin warned.  “There have already been too many delays.  I told him this situation would be quickly fixed, and I don’t wish to be made a liar.  Frustrating him is not wise.  This project is not his only concern.”

“If he wants a weapon capable of defeating the Avengers, he will have to wait.”

“He wants anarchy and an instrument capable of delivering it.  We’re past the time for waiting.  Our contacts in America have started and they will go forward with or without us.”

“Rossovich can face the Avengers as he is.  The degeneration is not so severe as to significantly weaken him.”

“Not yet.  This is… risky.”

“I’ve never known you to back down from that.”

“I shouldn’t have listened to you.”

”Malik will see reason, or he has to be prepared to keep Rogers alive.”

The spray of the shower drew her back to herself.  The nurses were surprisingly gentle as they washed her with an odorless soap and pleasantly warm water that did nothing to ease the ice in her bones.  Lukin grunted.  “I already defied his orders bringing Rogers here.  He wants Captain America removed from the equation.”

“Not wise,” the doctor replied.  Through the curtain, Natasha could see him shift his weight.  “If you’re worried about Rossovich’s hunger, we have a temporary solution.  It’s the reason I called to tell you to bring Rogers here in the first place, and not a moment too soon, apparently.  Omega Red would have slaughtered him.”  Natasha flinched.  The doctor sighed.  “If Rogers can buy us some time, it’s worth the chance.  And, all that aside, it’s insurance.  If something were to happen and she miscarries before we can get what we need, we have a chance to start again.  With both him and her in our custody, we could theoretically breed an army.”

That was too much.  Natasha choked on her breath, pushing the nurse in front of her away.  The woman came right back.  She caught Steve’s dog tags and tried to remove them as well.  “No!” Natasha snapped.  She lashed out, catching the woman sharply across the head and dropping her to the wet tiles.  Grabbing Steve’s dog tags, she backed into the wall, glaring.  “Don’t take them!”

The other nurses shared worried glances, and outside Natasha could see the soldiers approaching with their rifles raised.  The doctor peered around the curtain, staring analytically at Natasha’s naked form with the dog tags tight against her chest and the violent warning burning in her eyes.  “Let her keep them,” he ordered his assistants.  He drew the curtain shut again.  The nurses glanced fearfully at each other, keeping their distance a moment more before warily resuming washing their charge.  And Lukin and the doctor were quickly resuming their conversation.  The doctor sighed in irritated acquiescence.  “If you decide to eliminate Rogers, at least allow me to collect some samples first.”  Natasha grimaced as they washed her hands thoroughly to get them clean.  Red, soapy water sluiced down the drain.  She knew they weren’t talking about blood samples.

They finished the shower, toweled her dry, and gave her a hospital gown to wear.  She drifted in a daze through all that, and when the nurses led her from behind the curtain, she saw Lukin was gone.  The soldiers remained.  And the doctor.  He smiled disarmingly and patted an examination bed a little further inside the room.  It was prepared with a sheet and tools.  “Come here, my dear.”

Natasha shook her head.  “I want to see Steve,” she said.  She hadn’t even thought to speak, but the words came out all the same, tremulous but firm.

The doctor nodded.  “Maybe in a bit.  First, let’s make sure you’re healthy and all of this running around hasn’t impacted the baby.”

When she didn’t jump to obey, the soldiers came closer with their guns.  It was an empty threat, but she was lost and defeated enough to be motivated by it.  More than that, though, logic was collapsing under the weight of this torture.  If she cooperated, she’d get to see Steve.  So she cooperated.

This was dehumanizing.  It wasn’t painful; it was simply a standard medical examination, the same that Doctor Fine had given her multiple times since she’d learned she was pregnant.  A blood draw.  Measurements of her pulse, her blood pressure, her weight.  She faded from it all because the parallels between this and the last time she’d been touched like this in the Red Room were too horrible to face.  It was seeping out of the darkness in her heart, and she drifted in apathy because facing any of that was too awful.  At long last, the doctor put the same sort of probe Fine had used on her back in New York to check the baby’s heartbeat.  He found it almost instantly.  “Nice and strong,” he said with another soft smile.  He was extremely pleased.  “My colleagues are short-sighted.  This is about more than simply correcting the aberrations in Rossovich.  If I have my way, you will be the mother of the next stage of humanity’s evolution.  For years we have been forcing it to occur with drugs and chemicals and radiation.  This time nature is on our side.  You should be excited.”  She wasn’t.  She wanted to throw up.

The doctor left her alone after that.  The nurses took her to a room.  There was a bed that had decent sheets and a soft blanket, some furniture (all of the same white and chrome that dominated the lab’s appearance), and its own private bathroom.  This was where they were going to keep her until the baby was born (or until they got tired of waiting and…  _No!_ ).  As far as prison cells went, it was the nicest she’d ever seen.  But it was still a prison cell.  The nurses left her a tray with water, a sandwich, and some fruit.  She didn’t eat it.  One of the nurses looked down on her, a sad expression on her face.  “Eat,” she implored in an empty voice.  “Stay strong for the baby.”

When she was at long last alone again, Natasha sat on the bed, furious.  She stared darkly at the meal.  Eating felt like submission, like defeat, even more than the despair clouding her thoughts.  She knew she was being watched.  She looked to the tiny camera in the upper right corner.  Suddenly staying quiet and pliant was revolting, and she lost her temper.  “I want to see Steve,” she reminded.  She didn’t know if they could hear her.  She didn’t care.  She was unable to contain her fury any longer.  “I want to see Steve now!  Do you hear me?  Now, goddamn it!  Do you fucking hear me?  _Now!”_

Nobody answered.  And nobody came.  Natasha could hardly breathe beyond her rage.  She drowned in it, deafened by the roar of her heart and burned by the acid rushing in her veins.   Slowly she came back to herself.  She drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them.  Bracing her forehead to them, she breathed.  Now the silence was crushing, a roar of nothingness in her ears.  She wanted to cry, but there were no tears left.  _Steve told me to be strong.  I can’t break down.  I have to stay strong, find a way out of here…_  

She scanned the cell, but there was nothing.  The one door was securely locked; there was no knob or locking mechanism on her side to break or manipulate.  There was no vent that was large enough for her to access.  No weaknesses in any of the walls.  Still, she looked them over again and again, finding nothing, fading into her pain and grief and despair and then forgetting that there was nothing to find and obstinately looking once more.  She began searching more vigorously, yanking open drawers and finding clothes (little more than pajamas) but nothing else.  Changing out of the thin hospital gown was a subtle relief, and she felt more armored and better protected.  She paced the cell, investigating everything carefully.  The furniture was attached to the walls.  The bed was immovable.  The bathroom was spartan and empty.  Time passed.  Hours.  Quite a few of them.  Eventually she resigned, frustrated and breaking inside.  She couldn’t stand to think about anything.  Not what they would do to her and to her child.  Not what they were probably doing to Steve.  Not what they wanted.  _The Red Room owns you.  You and every part of you._

 _No._ She could hear Steve’s voice, clear across her thoughts.  _“You’re stronger than this.  He doesn’t own you.”_ She pressed her hand to the slight bulge in her belly.  _I need to be strong.  Steve made me promise to stay strong._

She stood, padding on bare feet to the little table.  It was so hard, but she sat and finally ate.  Nothing had any taste, but once she started, she couldn’t stop.  She was famished.  _For the baby._   The mantra resounded in her head, calming her.  _For the baby.  For Steve._   She sipped the water and sat back on the bed.  Could she sleep?  _Should_ she sleep?  She wrapped herself in the blanket and lay down.  Guilt swirled in her stomach that she was actually considering sleep while Steve was…  She didn’t know what was happening to him.  The tears threatened anew, but she held them back.  She needed to sleep.  _For the baby._

She couldn’t.

Was this going to be her life now?  A test subject?  Days upon days like this, six months full of them, waiting and slowly dying inside…  She couldn’t even fathom it.

She didn’t know how long she lay there, holding Steve’s dog tags with one hand, holding her stomach with the other.  Eventually she dozed fitfully again.  When the door suddenly opened, she sprang lithely from the bed, dropping into a defensive stance in the corner of the room.  It was the doctor.  “There are additional tests we want to run.”

“I want to see Steve,” she said again.  “I want to know where he is.  I want to know if he’s okay.”

“He is.  For now.”  He stared at her, clearly contemplating the situation.  He offered up something of a placating smile.  “Unlike some others of our group, I believe fostering a calm environment will be a reward of its own.”  She said nothing to that.  He sighed.  There was hardness to his face, but it wasn’t indicative of cruelty as it had been with Brushov and was with Lukin.  He was a practical man.  “I can’t guarantee he will not be harmed, but I will do what I can to minimize it.  And I will allow you to see him.”  She schooled her expression to keep her relief from showing.  “Is that enough to satisfy you?  Will you cooperate?  For your sake and the sake of your child, I pray that you do. This doesn’t have to be painful or unpleasant.”

Natasha stared at him, struggling to see through him.  Was he lying?  Normally she was adept at telling that, but events of late had impaired her somewhat.  Still, any chance at keeping Steve safe – at being with him – was worth it.  If they thought they could use him against her, then she would set the terms.  She nodded.

“Alright.  I’ll take you there as a token of good faith.”

She hesitated.  “Why are you doing this?”

She wasn’t specific as to what “this” was.  Holding them captive.  Aiding Lukin and whoever else was behind this.  Being kind to her, even if it was all a means to coerce her.  Giving her what she wanted.  He smiled softly.  “Because I wish to see the dawning of a new world.  The age of heroes is over,” he said simply.  “This is the age of miracles.”  His eyes darted to the swell of her stomach.  “And monsters.”

* * *

He took her deeper inside this fairly massive complex to what was clearly a detention block.  They passed rows of empty cells; it seemed like this amalgamation of HYDRA and the Red Room only had one prisoner at the moment, and dozens of soldiers were assigned to guard him.  And not just soldiers.

Natasha fearfully avoided looking at Omega Red as they approached where they were keeping Steve.  The massive man was actually _pacing_ outside the cell.  He was tense, wound tight and barely controlling himself.  It was like a predator stalking his cornered prey, unable to make the kill and impatiently waiting for it to come out.  It was horrifying.  When she got close, the monster licked his lips like he knew what she had inside her.  A way to fix this addiction, as Lukin put it.  For a moment, Natasha was terrified that Rossovich would end this there and then, attack her himself and try to take what he needed.  But he didn’t.  He growled low in his throat but submissively backed away from the entrance to the cell.

Steve caught sight of her through the large window on the wall of the room before the doctor succeeded in unlocking the door.  He stood from where he’d been sitting against the far wall, his face fracturing in relief.  He looked okay, pale and a mess, but no more hurt than she’d seen him last.  Natasha was flying across the floor the minute she could.  She rushed into his embrace, heaving a sobbing breath against his uninjured shoulder and quivering in pleasure at just the feel of him – his arms and his skin and his eyes and _he’s alright he’s okay_ – as he held her tight.  He was shaking, too.  “Oh, God, Nat.  It’s been hours.  I thought that…”  His voice failed him.  “Are you okay?”

She couldn’t manage a thought, let alone an answer, so she just nodded and sighed to hold herself together.  They stood like that for what felt like forever, the doctor and the soldiers and Omega Red watching from outside.  Vaguely she felt Steve turning them, like it mattered, like they could have _any_ privacy in captivity, but he was still trying to give her some.  He pushed her gently to the wall and cupped her face.  “What happened?” he asked.  His eyes were dark with worry as his thumbs swept along her cheekbones.  “Did they hurt you?  Did they hurt the baby?”

She shook her head.  She took better stock of him and noticed his shoulder was still in bad shape.  At least two days had passed since he’d been stabbed.  “Your shoulder…”

He kissed her forehead and pulled her against his chest again.  She gladly let him squeeze her until it almost hurt, losing herself in the beat of his heart under her ear and the warmth of his body.  “What do they want?”

She had almost forgotten that he didn’t know anything.  She hadn’t been able to find the strength to explain it before, and she wasn’t sure she could now.  And she didn’t want to waste whatever few minutes they had on evil.  On what he was there for.  On what they wanted from them both.  _“We could theoretically breed an army.”_   That was enough of a reminder that that doctor, no matter how pleasant he was acting, was as much of a monster as Lukin and Omega Red.  And it was enough of a reminder that she _had_ to tell him.  She did, in halting, quick whispers against his breast.  “They want the serum in the baby’s blood.  It’s both of us.  Yours and mine.  The super soldier serum and what they gave me in the Red Room.”

He stiffened.  “Why?”

“To fix him,” she whispered, closing her eyes against the burn.  “To make him unstoppable.”

“Who?  What?”

As if concerned at the information she was sharing, the doctor called from the doorway, “Alright.  Your time is up.”  It hadn’t been more than a couple of minutes!  Natasha couldn’t swallow the sob building in her throat.  She curled her fingers tightly into Steve’s shirt.  She didn’t care if it was beneath her – _she should have been stronger than this!_ – and buried her wet face into his chest and tried to hide.  “I’ll make you a deal, my dear.  Every day that you cooperate with us, which includes submitting without a struggle to any and all tests and procedures _and_ taking proper care of yourself–”

“No deals,” Steve snapped.  He turned and backed Natasha into the wall behind him.  “You won’t touch her.  Whatever you want, you take it from me.”

“We can’t, Captain,” the doctor said.  He seemed increasingly aware that this had been a mistake.  And he was trying to explain, to rationalize.  “We’ve tried.  Your serum alone isn’t the answer.  He was born of the Red Room derivative, and we can’t combine them.”

“You’re not listening to me,” Steve hissed, pressing Natasha tighter into the cold surface.  “You are not going to touch her!”  A low growl resounded outside like distant thunder.  Feral.  Steve was undaunted at the warning.  His eyes flashed dangerously.  “Do you hear me?”  His voice had a tone to it she’d never heard before.  More than anger.  A threat that he would do anything, hurt or kill _anyone_ , to protect her.  “I’ll die before I let you do anything more to her.”

The doctor raised his hands in surrender.  “That’s not necessary.  We don’t intend to harm Natasha.  Quite the contrary.”

The situation was degrading rapidly, and everyone knew it.  The soldiers were pushing inside, guns at the ready.  Steve reached a hand behind him and took Natasha’s, firm and possessive.  “She stays here with me.  You are not taking her.  You are not taking the baby.”  The tension was palpable.  Rifles were pointed at them.  “Get back!  Stay away from us!”

“Captain–”

Omega Red _roared_ , and then he was inside the cell.  He smashed through part of the wall like it was nothing, and before Steve or Natasha could do a thing, the tentacles shot forth and encircled Steve.  He shouted in surprise and frustration, struggling wildly as they coiled around his wrists and forearms and biceps.  His hand was ripped from hers.  “No!  No!”  Natasha reached for him, but he was already gone, lifted off the ground and hauled across the room.  Steve kicked out, caught the monster across the face with enough force to snap his head back.  Natasha swore she heard his neck crack, prayed for it to break, but the beast recovered with a murderous glint in his eyes.  He snarled in ire, dragging Steve closer, the tentacles encircling him again so tightly his clothes ripped and his bones seemed to creak.  He cried out, muscles straining against the metal around him to no avail.  Natasha panicked and ran to help him.  To _stop this_.  _No!  No, no, no– “Let him go!”_

“Arkady–” the doctor warned.

“He’s _mine!”_ the beast snapped.  “Mine!  You promised me!”

“I know,” the man soothed, “but you were told to wait.  You need to wait.”

“No!”

The doctor grabbed Natasha’s arm as she tried to rush to Steve’s side.  He pulled her away, behind him.  He was protecting her.  _Sparing_ her.  “Calm down.  Get Romanoff out of here.”  The soldiers nodded at the command.  There were more hands on her, holding her back.  And the doctor was trying to block her view of what was happening.  “You shouldn’t see this.  It’s not good for the baby.”

“Get away from me!” Natasha snapped, absolutely appalled.  The horrors of what Lukin showed her, of what he promised her would happen…  She had no leverage, nothing to ply against them, no way to prevent anything, and that helplessness was crushing.  She could do nothing other than watch.  “Steve!  _Steve!”_

“Nat…”  Steve gasped as Omega Red squeezed tighter, and every second the monster waited felt to be the last.

“Get her out of here!” snapped the doctor, and he whirled to face Omega Red.  “Put him down!  Don’t kill him!  Are you listening?  You need to wait!”

 _“No!”_   Omega Red lifted Steve closer to him.  “I am the alpha _and_ the omega.”  Steve’s eyes widened and the blood drained from his face.  Omega Red smiled without a touch of warmth, of compassion.  It was smug and cruel and vicious.  “The beginning and the end.”

 _“Don’t!”_ Natasha screamed, but it was too late.  She saw the tentacles minutely tighten and the beast’s huge chest inhale sharply in expectation.  There was light, light _sucked_ from Steve’s body where the coils were burning into his skin.  He wailed in agony but only for a second before his breath – _body_ – failed him.  “Stop it!  _Stop it!”_

Shockingly, he did stop it.  Omega Red’s hungry scowl _shattered_ in pain and horror and revulsion, and he dropped Steve like he was the one who burned him.  The tentacles shuddered and retracted.  The light vanished.  Steve hit the floor hard on his back, gasping, shaking, and glistening with sweat.  Everybody was so surprised that Natasha was able to yank free of the soldiers.  She shoved past the doctor and went to her knees at Steve’s side, helping him sit up.  There were faint lines across his skin under his torn shirt, places were the tentacles had made contact, but he was alive and seemingly unharmed.

Omega Red stared down on them, alarmed.  _Horrified._   So was the doctor.  And the soldiers.  Natasha was so overwhelmed she couldn’t even understand why for a moment.  Then Omega Red snarled again and grabbed Steve’s shirt.  He yanked him from Natasha and tossed him across the room, away from the others.  Steve hit the wall hard enough to dent it, slumping down before rolling shakily to his knees.  The monster was already on him, and the tentacles looping around him and pinning him to the wall behind him.  Steve didn’t struggle this time, dazed and scared.  Omega Red dragged him further away from the others like an animal hoarding its meal.  That was exactly what he was.  An animal hoarding its meal.  And Steve screamed again, the glow along the tentacles grossly bright.  _No, please…_   “Let him go!”

And, again, Omega Red dropped him.  He was staggering, obviously in debilitating pain, his skin wet and his eyes wide.  Spit slipped from his gasping lips.  Steve moaned at his feet, barely breathing himself.  There were more people in the room now.  Lukin.  Additional soldiers.  Some of the scientists.  Natasha stared at Steve, gasping in teary, fast-paced pants.  His skin was pasty, gray, sheening with perspiration, and he seemed small, curled into himself and quaking violently.  But healthy color began to come back as the seconds escaped, and he stopped shaking.  He caught his breath.  He started to move.  He started to recover.

And she started to understand.

Omega Red couldn’t take his life, at least not without threatening his own.  Omega Red _couldn’t kill him._

_The super soldier serum was like poison._

The alpha and the omega.Two opposites.  The first and last.  The beginning and the end.

Omega Red howled in frustration and rage and went at Steve again.  He tried harder, his hideous face twisted in strain as he forced himself to overcome whatever agony and illness this was causing him.  Natasha wept silently when Steve went completely limp in the monster’s grasp.  He lost consciousness as the life was drained from his body.  It wasn’t enough, though.  Omega Red was forced to drop him once again, slamming down onto his own knees with a ragged sob.

The room was silent save for the monster’s halting breaths.  He shifted to sit on his rear, his tentacles lying limp and useless on the ground beside him, twitching spastically.  Steve was prone.  Was he breathing?  Natasha couldn’t see.  _God, please…_   She tried to yank her arms away from the men holding her, but they wouldn’t let her go.

Lukin stalked over to Omega Red.  “Finish him,” he barked.

Omega Red said nothing, _did_ nothing.  He couldn’t catch his breath.  His eyes were wide, bulging and leaking tears like blood.  Natasha thought she could see his heart pounding from a vein in his throat.  He was seemingly shaking apart at the seams.  When he did nothing to follow the orders, Lukin backhanded him roughly.  “Get up,” he hissed, “and finish him.”

“He can’t, not without damaging himself further,” the doctor explained breathlessly.

“You fool!”  Lukin whirled and regarded his colleague with angry eyes.  “He is stronger than this, stronger than Captain America!  This isn’t possible!”

The other man was floundering.  “We need time to test this!  It throws our theories about how to correct–”

“Her.”  The monster’s eyes suddenly narrowed.  He stood, trembling wildly.  “Give me her,” he snarled, turning a glare onto Natasha.

“Arkady–”

“You promised me you would take away my hunger!” The beast’s strength was returning now, and he climbed to his feet.  He left Steve where he laid, his desperate eyes focused on Natasha.  He staggered over, face contorted in fury and desperation, his eyes hot with madness.  The men let her go and backed away, terrified.  “She will take it away!  You promised me she would!”

“No,” Natasha whispered.

“If the super soldier serum isn’t capable of sustaining him–”

“Sustaining?  Are you mad, Faustus?  It was toxic!”

Omega Red lost his patience.  He lost everything, any semblance of sanity and restraint, succumbing completely to the violent desire within him.  He lashed out with the tentacles, aiming for Natasha, but she was much smaller and faster than he was.  She darted down between the monster’s thick legs, scrambling toward Steve.  Suddenly men were screaming.  She looked over her shoulder to see each tentacle around a soldier, shimmering hot with life, skin drawing tight over bones and shriveling.  Natasha watched in horror as he murdered indiscriminately, feeding in an unrestrained rampage.  Guns went off.  Lukin was shouting.  The cell was being destroyed.  It was chaos.

They needed to run _right now._

“Steve,” she gasped, shaking his shoulder roughly.  He was breathing, but it was extremely slow.  Terrified, she pressed her trembling fingers to his neck.  His heartbeat was a weak flutter, hardly anything.  Christ, the monster had nearly killed him.  She couldn’t spare a moment to be relieved he was actually alive or afraid of what damage might have been done to him.  There was no time.  She couldn’t carry him out of here, but she couldn’t leave him.  He had to wake up!  “Steve!  Steve, wake up!  Wake up!”  More screaming.  More gunfire.  More shouting.  Lukin and the doctor were fleeing.  She glanced over her shoulder and saw Omega Red killing with reckless, violent abandon, man after man after man, dropping the hollowed, emaciated husks of their bodies to the ground like spent candy wrappers.  When his blood lust was satiated enough to think again, he’d realize where she was and…  _“Steve, please!”_

Omega Red lifted his head and looked right at her.  He was huge, pulsating with ugly power, with the power of all the men from whom he’d drained the life.  Blood dripped from the tentacles as he turned and settled his horrendous gaze on her.  On what he wanted.  On what he thought could finally and completely slack his thirst.  He smiled and charged.

The wall behind them exploded.  Natasha threw herself down over Steve, debris flying overhead.  There was a very distinctive whine of something powerful charging up.  _Repulsors._ Light burst above her head, and she watched in overwhelming relief as Omega Red backpedaled and growled threateningly.  Through the smoke and dust, Iron Man flew inside the room and landed firmly in front of them.  “Back off, asshole.”

Omega Red snarled.  The prison cell was falling apart with all of the damage done to it, but that didn’t stop Tony from unloading a barrage of repulsor shots and missiles at the monster.  And it didn’t stop Thor ( _Thor?  Where…_ ) from charging into the cell behind him and throwing his hammer right at the beast’s chest.  Natasha watched, stupefied enough to wonder if she wasn’t hallucinating, as the Asgardian summoned Mjölnir back to his outstretched hand.  Omega Red attacked, and Thor, dressed in all of his god-like finery, instantly fought back.

“Natasha.”  She tore her gaze from the incredible, _impossible_ sight in front of her to look up at Iron Man.  “Sorry.  Took more time than I thought it would to find you guys.”

And then there were more people.  Sam, crouching beside Steve.  Hill, bearing a bag of first aid supplies and a slew of weapons.  She went straight to Natasha, face stoic but eyes bright with concern.  They were shouting to each other, shouting to her to find out if she was hurt, telling her that everything was alright now and that they were going to get them out, but it all seemed stretched through a tunnel infinitely long.  She couldn’t think or feel or believe what was happening.  It couldn’t be real.  It just couldn’t be.

But it was.  Tony and Sam were taking a quick stock of Steve’s vitals.  They seemed happy enough with what they found.  “Here.  Let me take him.”  Iron Man rolled Steve gently onto his back and looped an arm under Steve’s knees and another around his shoulders.  He lifted his huge frame like it was nothing and walked out.  Hill went in front of him, her guns blaring as she cleared the way.

Seeing Steve was alright, Sam raced to Natasha.  “Nat, are you alright?” he breathlessly asked, holstering his own gun to wrap steadying arms around her.  She nodded, not quite with it, leaning into the secure strength of his chest because her own courage was rapidly vanishing.  He was pulling her with him, pulling her away from this nightmare, and she stumbled over her feet, looking back at Thor battling Omega Red.  The monster had his tentacles around Thor’s torso, but his attempts to drain the god’s life were failing stupendously, and the beast knew it.  He was trying to run.  He was going to run.  And Thor was going to chase him off.  “Don’t worry.  Thor can handle him.”

“Steve…”

“He’s fine.  We’ve got him.  It’s alright now.  I promise.”  She closed her eyes and completely collapsed against him.  Sam swept her securely into his arms, and she was too relieved to care that he was carrying her.  “Come on.  Let’s get you out of here.”


	11. Chapter 11

There was a way out of this.  A way to see through the cloud cover.  A way home.

A way back to her.

A way back to who he was.

_Captain America._

Steve was walking.  It felt like he had been for a long time, but he couldn’t say how long exactly.  Minutes were distorted here, at once endless and flying by like nothing at all.  And he didn’t know where he was, either.  Everything was still shrouded in that infinite, monotonous gray.  But it was peaceful now, a gentle mist that was cool and pleasant on his skin, and it was quiet.  Not a breath of wind.  Not another soul.  Even his own heartbeat was quiet, not frighteningly so but simply soft and untroubled.  _Walk_.  That was the only thought in his head.  _Walk.  There’s a way out._   One step, then another and another.  One foot in front of the other.  He was tired, but not enough to stop.  He couldn’t stop.  _Keep going.  You’ll find a way._

He believed he could now.  His steps didn’t falter, steady and strong, even though the fog stayed thick and his path remained hidden.  There was no way to tell one direction from another in this void; there hadn’t been before, and that hadn’t changed.  However, he had.  He had changed, and now he simply knew which way to go.  He stuck to a path he could only see in his heart, only _feel_ in his heart.  One foot in front of the other.  One step, then another and another.  _Keep walking._

Eventually the mist thinned ahead like there was light shining through it.  A soft light, pure and comforting.  He spotted it like a beacon through the fog, and he went that way.  It wasn’t simply light, he realized after a while.  It was a shape.  When he got closer, he realized it wasn’t simply a shape, either.  Points that shone silver and strong.  Five of them.  _A star._   And when he got closer still, he realized it wasn’t simply a star.

It was his shield.  His shield on someone else’s back.  “Buck?”

The star was gone because Bucky turned around.  His face was laden with stubble, shoulder-length hair mussed but not unwashed.  The face of the Winter Soldier, but not.  Not the Winter Soldier because this face was softer, rid of its malice and cruelty, and its eyes were Bucky’s eyes, knowing and true.  The same as they’d always been.  “Hey, Steve.”

“I was looking for you,” Steve said as he stopped in front of his friend.

Bucky smiled.  It was a ghost of his best shit-eating grin.  “Well, you found me.  Wasn’t so hard, was it?”

Steve smiled, too.  “You’re unbelievable.”

“One of a kind.  Best there is.  Best there ever was.”

“Modest, too.”

“When you got it, you don’t hide it.”

“Jerk.”

“You wanna walk with me?  We’re almost out.”

“Sure.”

They started walking together, walking through hazy memories.  Brooklyn.  Shoulder to shoulder on the way home from school.  Walking back from a dance hall on a hot summer night.  Heading to cinema.  Heading to the Stark Expo.  France.  Italy.  Germany.  Shoulder to shoulder in the woods, trudging back to SSR’s base.  They were always like this, Steve on the left and Bucky on the right.  Only Bucky was carrying his shield.  That seemed strange but not strange enough to really bother him.  He glanced at Bucky out of the corner of his eye, but his friend was calm and quiet, same in all of the important ways but different, too.  Changed, just like Steve was.

“I’m never going back there, Buck.”  He hadn’t thought to say that.  The words simply came, softly spoken but firm, forged in all of the suffering they’d endured together.  “I can’t.  Can’t ever go back.”

“I know.”

Steve sighed, letting all of his pain out on a long breath.  “Couldn’t see anything clearly.”

“I know, pal.  I know.”

“How could I let them hurt me like that?  They got in my head, just like you kept sayin’… messed everythin’ up real bad.”

Bucky’s hand twitched.  It was the metal one, the left one so close to Steve’s right.  He didn’t flinch, not even when the cool steel brushed against his skin.  “It’s not your fault.  Ain’t nobody’s fault.  Not mine.  Not yours.  And they can’t hurt us anymore, not unless we let them.  Honestly, there ain’t much left they can do to us, anyway.”  Steve smiled sadly at that, because Bucky was right.  “And it’s time to move past it.”

They kept walking.  The silence was sweet and comforting, also a remnant of days long past when they’d sit in their apartment, Bucky reading the paper and Steve sketching, the swish of charcoal and the crinkle of newsprint the only conversation.  After a while, Bucky grinned.  “You know, your ma would kill you for knocking her up.”

Steve flushed to the roots of his hair with shame.  His mother had been a sweet woman, frail but cool-tempered with gentle hands and patient eyes.  But she’d been devoutly Catholic and quite firm about her rules.  Both of their mothers had been.  How many times had Bucky’s ma lectured them both about keeping it in their pants?  When the hormones of adolescence had exploded (in Bucky, at least – Steve’s were always hampered by being so small and sickly), it was an almost weekly lecture on the way out the door to this dance or that date.  Steve’s mother had been considerably less vocal and boisterous about it, but her warnings were all that much louder for being so serious and soft-spoken.  Bucky was right, and thinking about his mother’s disappointment made his heart ache.  “She’d box your ears, Stevie, just like that time when we…”  Bucky trailed off, laughing to himself.  He shook his head.  “Never thought I’d see the day when I’d be the one giving _you_ this talk.  Our mas are probably rolling over in their graves.”

“It was an accident.  And shut up.”

“Eh, don’t worry.  You’ll do what’s right by her.  Protect her.  Take care of her.  You love her.”  Bucky said that without a shred of doubt in his voice.  “So you’ll do what’s right.”

He hadn’t thought about it, but Bucky knew what he was talking about.  “I know.”  _I will._

Bucky sighed.  He looked ahead.  They’d walked a long, long time, and they were far from where they’d started.  “Well, this is where I stop.  You walk the rest of this by yourself.”  He looked at Steve, his eyes a tad grief-stricken but not so much as to be teary.  At least, not at first.  “I can’t go any closer.”

“Buck…”

“Not yet,” Bucky whispered.  “Not ready yet.”  He sniffed, the pain on his face sharp and twisting Steve’s gut with the undeniable need to help him.  “You’re ready, Stevie.  I’m not.  I can’t go back.   I’m fucked up.  Gonna be for a long while yet.  So you go on without me.”

 _No._ Steve was horrified.  “I can’t leave you behind.  I can’t let you go.  Not again.”

“This is really for the best.  You don’t need me right now.  You got her.  You got them.”

“That’s not true–”

Bucky raised his hand to stop Steve from saying anything further.  “Doesn’t matter.  It’s what we both want, deep down inside.  You’re going to the light.  You always are.  I’m down in the darkness for the time being.  I can’t follow you.  Not like this.”  Steve’s face crumpled in dismay and he opened his mouth, but he didn’t know what to say to that.  He wanted to argue, knew he _should_ argue more, but he just couldn’t.  Somehow denying Bucky’s choice felt like demeaning it.  He’d lost so much.  His arm.  Control over his mind and body.  His identity.  Everyone he had known and loved.  Steve had no right to demand that he come with him, no right to drag him back into the world when he was still so broken.  Bucky grabbed him tight and hauled him close.  “You go.  I told you I’ll find my own way.  Really.  I will.”

“I know you will.”  Steve cupped the back of his neck, threading his hand through the long locks of brown hair, and tugged him into his shoulder.  “But you don’t have to do this alone.  That’s all I wanted to tell you.  It’s all I wanted.  Just to find you so that you don’t have to go through this alone.”

“My cross to bear,” Bucky grunted with half a chuckle.  “It ain’t like you’re abandoning me, you dumb punk.  And I ain’t giving up, either.  You ever know me to quit?”

Steve quirked a weary smile, even if Bucky couldn’t see it.  “And they say I’m the stubborn one.”

“Stubborn and stupid.  I learned from the best.”  Bucky sighed, sagging into Steve’s embrace.

This wasn’t enough.  It couldn’t be enough.  Steve closed his eyes against the burn of tears.  “You showed me how to be strong again.  I’ve got to do the same for you.  I’ve got to, Buck.”

“You will.”  Bucky held him tight, squeezing him hard, the metal arm curled around his back.  “You always do.”  They stayed still for a while, for those moments that were at once so fleeting yet as long as forever.  Bucky sniffed, wiped the back of his flesh and blood hand across his cheeks, and pulled away from Steve.  “Walk the rest of the way, huh?  Go to her.  And take this with you.”  He reached behind him and pulled the shield from his back.  He offered it to Steve.

Steve stared at his shield, at the red and blue and silver, at the star.  His fingers ached to touch it, to feel its smooth, unbreakable surface, the security of the worn leather straps in his hand, the comforting weight on his arm.  But he hesitated.  Was he still worthy of this?  Was he still Captain America?

Bucky smiled faintly.  “Take it.  It’s yours.  I’m sick and tired of carrying it around.”

Steve looked up at his friend, but there was nothing but sincerity and faith in his eyes.  Bucky smiled and nodded, that same smile he’d had and the same nod he’d given him a million times before.  Steve drew a deep breath and slipped his fingertips over the edge of his shield, so familiar to him now that it made the weeks of not having it right at his side stark and painful.  He gripped the shield tightly and easily lifted it from Bucky’s outstretched hand.  He took a deep breath, sliding the straps over his forearm.  The star was so bright, shining it seemed with a light all its own.  Then he looked up again.

Bucky was still smiling, a proud, relieved shine to his eyes.  “You don’t need to find me.  You never did.”  He clasped Steve on the shoulder.  “I’ll find you.  Til the end of the line, pal.  Now go.”  Bucky gently turned him around and pushed him forward.  _Keep walking._ One foot in front of the other.  One step, then another and another.  _Keep walking._

Steve came awake with a small breath.  He winced and closed his eyes again instantly, pain wracking over his skull with sharp insistence.  He moaned through clenched teeth, barely breathing through the vertigo.  He clenched something soft in his hand – sheets, maybe – and they ripped before he managed to stop himself.  “Easy, Steve.  Just take it easy.”  He knew that voice.

_Sam._

He forced his eyes open again and this time endured the spinning room and agony jolting through his brain.  It took a few deep breaths to arrive at the other side of the unpleasantness.  When he could focus, he saw Sam’s face leaning over him to his left.  There was worry deep in the other man’s eyes, worry and a great deal of relief.  “What…  Sam?”  God, was that his voice?

“Here.”  Sam offered him a cup of water.  He grinned feebly.  “Getting kinda tired of things playing out like this, you know.”

Steve stared at the cup uselessly before reaching out a trembling hand to take it.  His memories were being extraordinarily stubborn, and for one crazy, disoriented second, he wondered if they were back in that hotel after the fight in Prague.  But they weren’t.  “Where…”

“New York,” Sam supplied.  “Stark Tower.  Infirmary.”  Steve grimaced, struggling to sit up in what was clearly a hospital bed.  He tried to take a sip of water, but the pain thrummed in his head and grinding his teeth and closing his eyes again was all he could to not be sick all over himself.  His heart was pounding rapidly, and he felt… strange.  Everything was miserably acute.  The ache in his body and the sharp stiffness of his shoulder and the throbbing of his head and the tightness of his throat.  But everything was distant, too, like he wasn’t really there.  The sheets of the bed weren’t against his arms.  The cup wasn’t really in his hand.  The taste of old blood wasn’t really bothering him.  The cool, recycled air that smelled slightly of sterility…  It wasn’t _his_ lungs breathing it.  He was detached, but not.  His body, but not.  It was…  “Yeah.  It’s pretty crappy.  Don’t worry.  It gets better pretty fast.  Let me know if you feel like you’re gonna throw up.  The nausea’s the worst.”

He still couldn’t remember exactly what had happened to him.  There were flashes of things, his arms and legs being wrapped up in _something_ tight and prohibitive and searing hot…  Gray skin and blood red eyes…  The monster.  _The omega._ Darkness.  Evil in his body, invading, spreading, pulling him apart and siphoning his strength…  Every cell in his body straining in a violent, desperate fight to hold on to its life...  The omega turning toward Natasha.

_Natasha!_

Horror jolted over him, and he flung his legs out of the bed before he thought better of it.  Dizziness drove him down, and if it wasn’t for Sam there to steady him, he probably would have lost consciousness.  Another set of hands was there as well, vaguely unfamiliar.  “Whoa, whoa, Cap.  Stop.  You’re not ready to be up.”

“Where’s Natasha?” he gasped, not letting them push him back even though his body was bowing and his rubbery knees were bending against his will.  Desperation made his heart race, and he couldn’t breathe.  “Is she okay?  Is she?  Where–”

Sam got into his line of vision.  “She’s fine.  She’s here.  She’s with Clint.”               

Steve closed his eyes at that, shivering with relief.  The team had rescued them.  _The Avengers rescued us._   For some reason, that hadn’t quite sunk in until then, and it was overwhelming.  How lucky they’d been.  What could have happened…  He didn’t want to think about it.

A hand on his shoulder drew his drifting attention.  “Are you alright?”

Steve tried to force his jumbled and wayward thoughts together.  He was more than surprised to see Bruce Banner staring down at him, concern blatant on his unshaven face.  Vaguely he remembered Tony telling them that Bruce had been on his way to Manhattan.  Apparently he’d arrived.  Steve’s brain was still spectacularly failing him, because despite that realization he confusedly murmured, “Bruce?”

Bruce smiled.  “Nice to see you again.”

He glanced at Sam.  And then he noticed his shoulder was bandaged up under the white undershirt he was wearing and his arm was in a sling.  Vague memories of being stabbed by Omega Red’s tentacle, of the excruciating pain and burning sensation that seemed to drive through every part of him, filtered through his head.  It ached now, ached differently than the rest of him.  It was pain from damaged skin and muscle rather than from the phantom sensation of being devoured by Omega Red’s hunger.  “What’s wrong with my shoulder?”

“Technically, nothing,” Bruce explained.  Steve must have looked as befuddled as he felt, because the scientist smiled weakly and disarmingly.  “It’s just healing slowly.  Really slowly, slower than for a normal person even.  I stitched it up, but it’s probably going to take a week or maybe more for it to get better.”

That didn’t make sense.  It wasn’t possible.  “How?”

“The prevailing theory?”  Sam shrugged sympathetically.  “That sample of metal we found in Prague has some seriously screwed up properties.  We didn’t know about this one until now, but…”

“Tony hacked Vitalacorp’s servers yesterday.  The metal is something called carbonadium.  The Russians developed it as an answer to vibranium.  It’s not nearly as strong, but it’s still strong enough that it’s nearly impossible to bend or break.  In addition, it has a rather potent and unique Gamma signature, although we think that might be due to it coming in contact with Loki’s scepter.  And obviously it has the capacity to seriously impede accelerated healing.  And shift its shape when exposed to certain wavelengths of radiation.”

“What?”  That was too much to take in right now.

Sam sighed.  “The short of it is this: Omega Red has some evil-ass tentacle things made of this carbonadium shit that can literally suck a man’s life away.  That’s what happened to Clint.  And me.  And you.”

“You?”

Sam and Bruce shared a knowing, concerned look that only confused Steve further.  His head was so clouded, so seemingly stuffed with wool, to the point where nothing was making sense, or if it did, he couldn’t really hold onto it for more than a second before that hot, horrid sense of evil returned to dash his thoughts.  It felt like Omega Red was somehow still inside him.  It was fading, but not fast enough.  “When he was…  I touched something.  His soul?  It was…”

“Dark.  Evil.  Yeah, I know,” Sam agreed quietly.  Steve looked away, wishing this awful, empty feeling inside him would simply fade or could be erased somehow.  _Time.  It gets better._ Sam smiled.  “If you feel up for a walk, Natasha’s been waiting for you.  I promised I’d bring you over.”

 _Natasha._   Steve was pushing himself to his feet with renewed fervor.  Sam grabbed his good arm to steady him.  His friend looked him in the eye before drawing him into a warm, relieved embrace.  “You’re alright,” Sam said softly, though Steve wasn’t sure if he was reassuring him or himself.  “Christ, we couldn’t find you.  I knew it was a bad idea to leave you there.”

Steve didn’t argue with that.  He wrapped his uninjured arm around Sam’s back, patting in comfort because he didn’t know what else to do.  His mind drifted back to this dream, to Bucky.  _“You don’t need to find me.  I’ll find you.”_   He sighed, managing a bit of a snarky grin.  “Next time, you’ll slam the door in my face, right?”

Sam laughed, pulling back and hooking his arm around Steve’s neck in a friendly show of appreciation.  If there was some wetness at the corner of his eyes, Steve wasn’t going to say anything.  “Come on.”

Surprisingly, he wasn’t as weak or dizzy as he thought he would be once he started taking his first steps.  He _was_ weak and dizzy, but Sam was right; it was dissipating much quicker than it had seemed it would.  He idly wondered when Sam had been attacked.  Had Omega Red come here?  That, too, seemed to be too much to process right then, so he let the errant thought go for the time being and concentrated on letting Sam and Bruce direct him out of the room, down a short corridor, and into another room.

Inside he found the Avengers.  Thor was the first to notice them coming through the door.  Steve grimaced in confusion, his headache unpleasantly amplifying as he wondered when in the world the Asgardian had gotten involved with this mess.  It didn’t matter.  “Steve!”  Thor flashed him a friendly smile and devoured the small distance between them.  He grabbed Steve by the good shoulder before entrapping him in a hug that was a little too rough.  “It’s a great relief to see you awake, my friend.”

“Uh…  Yeah.  When did–”

“Apparently the Avengers assembled without you,” Tony explained.  He was smiling, though there was a hint of disappointment and resentment around his eyes.  That vanished quickly enough and he, too, hugged Steve after something of an inadequate handshake.  “Welcome back.”

“Thanks,” Steve said.  He looked among the group, not understanding at all how they’d all come together but extremely grateful for it all the same.  “And thank you for getting us out of there.”  He wanted to say more, but he couldn’t.  Things were too raw, too close, _so close_.

Tony smiled a little sheepishly.  “Don’t make it a habit, Cap.  Getting pretty tired of saving your sorry ass.”

“Sorry.”  He grimaced in a mixture of embarrassment and relief.  “How did you–”

“Well, I got your text.  Unfortunately, that fucking HYDRA virus in the Tower’s communications network fed your location right to the bad guys.  We were worried that would happen, but they still had a head start on us because we obviously didn’t get out there in time.  Found your rental car and a load of dead dudes and a burned down mansion, so we figured they took you.  I managed to finally get rid of the leak, hacked it, and traced it back to that tower in Prague.  We raided that, broke into some hard drives we borrowed with no intention of returning, and ran down the list of contacts and places until we found a rather large shipment of carbonadium sent to a lab in Samara in Russia.  We got lucky and hit the jackpot.”

Still overwhelming.  Yet again, it was distressing, how close they’d come to that much evil.  To HYDRA having Natasha and the baby.  To becoming Omega Red’s…

He stepped deeper into the room.  Natasha sat beside the bed, Sharon Carter behind her.  She smiled weakly at Steve, reaching out to tenderly grasp his arm as he approached.  Steve swallowed thickly, unable to think or feel much of anything.  Sharon moved so Steve could stand next to Natasha.  Carefully he set his hand on her shoulder.  She turned to him, her eyes red-rimmed and burdened by the trauma of everything through which she’d gone.  Her hands were wrapped securely around one of Clint’s.  Clint himself was…  _God._   He was completely lifeless, skin sallow, thin on his bones like he was wasting away faster than should be possible.  His eyes were sunken and tightly closed.  He wasn’t breathing for himself; plastic tubing was tapped in place through his slack lips, the dried red of his tongue tucked around the apparatus as it descended his throat and forced oxygen into his lungs.  The machines swished and beeped, sad and weak.  It was shocking.  Steve felt terrible; _this_ had been happening here, and he’d hardly even thought about it.  Natasha’s face was empty, forced stoicism, and Steve knew her way too well to be fooled.  She was barely holding herself together.  “How is he?” Steve heard himself ask.

Bruce’s tentative smile collapsed into a pinched frown.  “Bad.”  Steve closed his eyes at the pain knifing through his heart.  It was made so much worse by knowing what Clint had sacrificed himself to protect.  “He has massive organ failure.  He’s on the verge of brain death.”  Natasha flinched.  Steve reached his unhurt arm around her torso to press her head into his midriff.  “There isn’t anything I can do.”

Steve sighed, his breath shaking.  He made himself look at Clint, really look at him.  No matter what Clint had done in the past, he was a good man.  A friend.  And he meant so much to Natasha, was responsible for saving her from the Red Room so many years ago and bringing her into SHIELD.  More than that, though, he was the one who’d been her friend, stood by her and had faith in her when no one else would.  If it hadn’t been for Clint, Steve and Natasha would never have met, never have fallen in love, never…  “Why didn’t it do this to me?” he asked, finally tearing his eyes away to look at Bruce.  “Why couldn’t he kill me?”

Bruce shrugged helplessly, though not in annoyance.  “I have no idea.  Natasha told me what happened.  My guess?  The super soldier serum is completely incompatible with whatever serum the Red Room used to make this guy.”

“Toxic,” Natasha whispered.  Her eyes slipped shut, and she shook her head.  “They called you toxic.”

“Obviously they’re trying to stabilize whatever faulty metabolic process that’s causing Omega Red’s compulsive need to… feed on people.  But exactly why the original serum is so poisonous?  I’d need a lot more data to answer that,” Bruce said.  “We don’t know how Omega Red’s powers work.  Hell, we don’t even know how the serum works.”

“Doesn’t matter.  This puts a significant wrench in their dastardly plans,” Tony declared, folding his arms over his chest.  “They can’t use you to feed him.”

“What about the baby?” Steve asked quickly.

Bruce still seemed at a loss.  “I’d think no, but again, Steve, I can’t be sure.”

“He won’t care,” Natasha whispered.  Steve could feel the tiny shudder wracking her.  He held her tighter.

Tony sighed, noticing Natasha’s fear.  “Listen, this fucker isn’t going to get at any of us again.  His vampire powers don’t work on Thor.”

Thor stood straighter, folding his muscular arms over his polo shirt.  “Stark is right.  He cannot hurt me in the same way he hurt Barton.  And I have faced monsters and demons more dangerous than him before and emerged victorious.”

“So that’s one of us he can’t stop.  And the Hulk continues to be in a league all of his own.  And then you, Cap.  He knows he runs the risk of killing himself if he tries to put you down.  Well, at least if he tries to drain you again.  Whatever.  The point is: if this is what HYDRA or the Red Room or whoever is throwing at us, they’ve lost before they’ve even started.”  Tony seemed so sure.  Steve wished he could share his optimism.  “What we still need to deal with is whatever the hell they’re planning on unleashing here.  So I went ahead and called a team meeting.  That alright?”

Steve was having a hard time finding the energy to keep fighting.  It wasn’t just a side effect of Omega Red’s assault, either.  But he pulled himself together.  No matter how hurt and afraid and worried he was, it was his job to lead.  He hadn’t been doing too much of that recently.  It was time to get back in the game.  “Yeah.  Thanks.”

“How’s an hour sound?  JARVIS is still crunching through some data, and that’ll give you time to get cleaned up.”

“Sure.”

Everyone else nodded their assent.  He watched the rest of the team share quick looks, unspoken decisions and agreements, and then they began to shuffle out of Clint’s room.  They were giving Steve and Natasha time alone.  After a moment, it was only Sharon and Sam who remained.  Sharon smiled weakly at him, but she was clearly burdened by harsh and heavy worry for Clint.  She was making a concerted effort to not look at Barton’s lifeless body, to not seem so devastated, instead giving Steve more of a hug than she had before.  “Congratulations?” she said softly against his ear.  “I know the timing’s not great.”

Steve couldn’t help but be a little warmed by that, even though the timing was just as she said.  “Thanks.”

“Hey,” Sam said after Sharon had pulled away.  Sam handed him a couple of folders.  Steve recognized them instantly.  The dossier on the Winter Soldier.  Natasha’s file from the Red Room he’d stolen from the underground archive in Moscow.  “Found these in the rental.  Given how much Stark likes sticking his nose in things, I didn’t feel right letting him have them before you gave your say-so.”

This was so much like Sam.  Smart and perceptive and protective.  More and more, Steve was realizing how much of a friend he was.  Like Bucky.  “Thanks,” he murmured, taking the papers.

“You need anything?”

“No.  It’s alright.”

Sam didn’t seem entirely convinced, but he respected Steve too much to say anything about it.  He patted Steve’s shoulder before stepping back and heading out of the room.

It was silent.  Crushing.  Natasha was stiff against him.  She hadn’t relaxed since he’d come near, and Steve was afraid she was withdrawing into herself again.  Faced with everything they’d endured and what had almost happened and Clint’s awful condition, she was seeking the comfort of apathy, of nonchalance, locking everything up because that was how she dealt with pain.  He’d tried that approach.  It was terrible.  “Nat,” he whispered.

Finally she moved.  She reached up and grabbed his hand.  For a moment he feared she’d push him away, that they were _back_ to what they had been months ago.  But she didn’t.  She slid her fingers into his, clearly seeking his strength, and he held her tight.  “This is my fault.”

“No,” he quickly argued.  “No.”

She was shaking again.  “If I’d told him the truth…  He wouldn’t have snuck after me.  He wouldn’t have gotten mixed up in this.”

“And they would have taken you,” Steve returned, not forcefully but firm.  She closed her eyes, but a tear or two made a wet track down her face.  “He made a choice, Nat.  We’ve all made that choice.  You made it for me.  I made it for you.  And it’s not easy to be the one on the other side.  It hurts bad.  You know that.”  He was somewhat surprised at the level tone of his voice, how calm and controlled he was.  He didn’t have to fight for it even.  It simply came.  “When Bucky died, Peggy told me something that always stuck with me.  She told me that if I respected him, I shouldn’t blame myself because it undermined his decision.  He thought I was worth it.  And you know Clint would do anything to protect you.”

That wasn’t providing the solace he’d hoped.  Natasha flinched at the mention of Bucky’s name, and Steve worried anew she’d pull away.  She still didn’t.  “I never wanted this,” she whispered.  “I can’t lose him.  Not like this.  I owe him more than this.”

“I know, love.”  He crouched beside her, summoning strength and courage from somewhere.  It manifested itself as a smile.  “I know.  I do, too.”  Clint had given his life to protect Natasha and the baby and Steve hadn’t been there to help, to fight, to do what he could.  There was plenty of regret and pain to go around.   But it didn’t have to be that way.  He was tired of it, tired of feeling trapped and helpless.  Tired of despair.  Tired of being _broken._   “There’s a way to bring him back.  I know there is.”  She didn’t believe it.  Truth be told, he wasn’t sure he did, either.  Naïve, ignorant nonsense.  He knew how much she hated his optimism sometimes, but _this_ was who he was, what he knew.  He used the pad of his thumb to wipe the tears from her cheeks.  “Bruce said it.  We don’t know everything about Omega Red and his powers.  Maybe…  Maybe there’s a way to reverse it.”  Natasha’s face crumpled one piece at a time, trembling lower lip and quivering chin and eyelashes wet and blinking furiously to hold back a deluge.  “Come here.”

She went willingly into his arms.  She was shaking with a coming storm.  He could feel it.  Shaking apart.  Shaking to her core.  He’d weather it with her.  She wasn’t going back into the comfort of her training, escaping by hiding.  She wasn’t.  She wouldn’t.

He wouldn’t let her.

* * *

Steve was doing his damnedest to not lose his temper, but all of the hell of the last few days (weeks – no, _months_ ) was really wearing on him.  He still didn’t feel terribly well, a bit nauseous, achy, and frankly in need of some serious sleep.  Despite a shower, shave, and some clean clothes, he felt battered and dirty, like the filth of what he’d gone through was never going to quite go away.  His shoulder hurt.  He was hungry; he couldn’t remember the last time he’d really had a good meal.  And Tony’s anger wasn’t helping matters.  It was like something harshly grating over his already tender patience.  Over and over again.  _Grating._   “Tony, if I knew, don’t you think I would tell you?” 

Case in point.  There seemed to be nothing he could say to make Stark let this go.  “Let me get this straight,” the inventor practically seethed.  “You were in a meeting full of HYDRA or the Red Room or whatever, and all you got out of that was some ships are headed for New York.”  Steve bristled.  He and Tony got along well enough; Stark was probably the closest thing he had to a link to his past at the moment (aside from Bucky, and that was significant sore spot between them that Steve had no wish to revisit right now).  And Tony was a good friend.  But he had remarkably little control over his mouth when he got frustrated or angry (or most of the time, come to think of it, only when his mood was bad he went from randomly spewing out anything that came into his head to purposefully gouging you with his words like nails).  “You’re Captain America, for fuck’s sake.  What, a few armed goons was suddenly too much for you?”

Sam stiffened beside him.  And in the chair next to them, Natasha glared at Tony with icy eyes.  For his own part, Steve forced himself to take a deep breath and stay calm.  “There were more than fifty,” he said.  Tony cocked an eyebrow, not buying that.  He was too smart to accept that.  Steve had taken out plenty more than fifty enemies by himself before, even armed as they had been.  However, there was no way in hell that Steve was going to admit he’d nearly had a panic attack because of the STRIKE Team members he’d seen, that _getting the hell out_ had been about all he could manage.  “What did you want me to do?  Beat them senseless until they talked?”  He also wasn’t about to admit how close he’d come to doing exactly that.

“That would have been helpful, yes.”

“So I could have been captured before I even got to Nat?  Don’t think so.”

Tony’s eyes flashed, but he never got a chance to say anything.  “So all these men said was they were shipping this poison, whatever it is, into New York,” Bruce clarified, trying to get past all of this useless arguing.  This so-called team meeting had been nothing but tense since it had started, and they weren’t getting anywhere.  Apparently JARVIS been scouring over the hard drives the rest of the group had recovered from Prague, but aside from the information on the carbonadium (which concerned mostly its chemical composition, physical properties, and testing, rather than how it was made or how it worked), there hadn’t been much on HYDRA’s plans.  Furthermore, all of Tony’s efforts to find a connection between Lukin, Malik, and the mystery American were still fruitless.  Without knowing who that guy had been at that meeting in Prague, it was proving impossible to figure what was coming into the country and, equally importantly, _where_.  New York was a big place, a huge and bustling harbor, and what was worse, whatever shipment that had left Russia could have already reached its destination.

That was pretty alarming.  Steve sighed.  “They were recruiting men for some sort of Red Army.  That’s what they called it.”

“A Red Army,” Sam repeated incredulously.  “As in the Communist Red Army?  The October revolution Red Army?”

“Doubtful,” Hill responded.  She folded her arms across her breasts and leaned her hip against one of the consoles.  “Whatever it is, there’s no intel on it.  I’ve worked every connection I have in the Pentagon, in MI6, in the CIA.  Used up favors.  Pulled strings.  Whatever this army is, it’s either small enough to have escaped detection or there is something really serious going on here.”

“It seems like to be the latter,” Thor grumbled unhappily.

“What about this Swordsman character?” Steve asked.  “Find anything on him?”

Tony shrugged in frustration, letting his hands slap loudly against his thighs.  “Another ghost story, like your war buddy turned mass-murderer.  And probably about as redeemable.”  Steve bit his tongue until he tasted blood.

“What about Director Fury?” Sharon asked.  She glanced around the room before settling her gaze on Hill.  She raised her shoulders like this should have been obvious.  “Maybe he knows something.”

Hill’s jaw clenched.  That was the only sign that she was displeased.  “He didn’t leave me a way to contact him otherwise I would have by now.  I’ve tried everything I can.  If he’s out there, he’s silent.”

“Great,” Bruce said in annoyance.

“Dunno why you’re surprised.  We’re talking about a guy who faked Coulson’s death, who faked _his own_ death and is now perfectly happy vigilante-ing around the world, leaving us to deal with his fucking mess.”  Tony shook his head.  “But, then again, you and Thor missed all the fun the last time SHIELD left us in the lurch.”

That ramped up the tension again.  It did seem just like yesterday that they’d been gathered here in the command area that Tony had built for the Avengers, trying to figure out how to stop Project: Insight.  It was unreal and more than slightly disturbing that they were back here already.  Fury might have abandoned them all, but his words were fairly prophetic.  The world obviously needed the Avengers.  Thor raised his hand and stepped into the center of the room.  “That is neither here nor there.  Assessing fault does very little to help us move forward.”  He turned his gaze to Steve and Natasha.  “Obviously the baby interests them.  Surely those responsible for attempting to arrest Natasha here in your country are connected to this plot.”

“Yeah, but we still don’t know who,” Tony answered in frustration.

On the holographic display there were dozens of images.  Steve recognized some of them.  Lukin.  Malik.  Others he didn’t know.  He saw an image of a sleazy looking man who seemed vaguely familiar.  Despite the pervasive fogginess still troubling him, he put a name to the face with relative ease.  _Stern._   Hill shifted her weight and said, “I’ve worked every connection I can in the FBI.  So has Carter.  Whoever put the arrest warrant out for Romanoff has enough clout to make a heck of a lot of people follow along without explaining a damn thing.”

“Did you at least find out the charges?” Sam asked.

Hill sighed.  “You want them alphabetically or ranked by seriousness?”  Steve grimaced.  Natasha was completely unmoved.  “The one they’re rallying the troops behind the most is shooting the Cap.”

Steve’s heart skipped a beat.  Were they _ever_ going to be free of this?  “I never pressed charges.  Fury exonerated her!”

“With everything that happened, none of that carries much weight, not even your word,” Hill explained tersely.  “Dumping all of SHIELD’s secrets on the internet crucified us almost as much as it did HYDRA.”  She turned to Natasha, and her face softened.  “It also doesn’t help that you basically confessed during the hearing.”

Steve looked sharply at Hill.  “Hearing?  What hearing?”

“Yeah, you missed all that fun.  Our good pals at the Senate Armed Services Committee investigated HYDRA-Gate or SHIELD-Gate, whatever you want to call it, a couple of weeks ago,” Tony explained with air quotations around “investigated”.  He reached into the holographic display and grabbed what looked like video from C-SPAN.  “Mostly it was public lynching.  We think they wanted to blame you and me, but you’re Captain America and I’m Iron Man; they can’t touch us.  So they went after Barton and Hill and Romanoff and anyone else they could get their hands on.”

“Yeah, but Stern was the driving force behind that, and he was HYDRA.  And if what you guys heard overseas was true, he was involved in this plot.”  Sharon shook her head.  “Doesn’t it make sense he’d _want_ to have Natasha arrested?  What if that was what this was all really about?  An excuse to detain her.  If he knew about the baby–”

“I think he knew something,” Natasha said.  She looked up, her eyes gaining a harder glint.  “The way he was talking to me…  He might not have known why, but he knew they wanted me.  And he wanted me first.”

Sharon nodded and stepped closer to the huge display that was running through the footage from the hearing.  “Well, what if he wasn’t the only one?  Maybe whoever is behind this was involved with the hearing, and when Stern made a move, this guy took him out.  On orders from General Lukin or this Malik person.  Or maybe just because he wanted the bargaining chip.”  The idea hung in the silence for a moment.  Sharon was a bit exasperated at their unwillingness to jump on board with this idea.  “Come on.  This can’t be coincidence.  It’s just like SHIELD.  If we have HYDRA in our government, where’s the best place to operate while avoiding suspicion?”

 _Law enforcement._   “Let’s see who else was on the committee,” Steve ordered.

Tony brought it up quickly.  “Believe it or not, I’ve been through this before.  These guys are all clean.  Like squeaky clean.”  Images and profiles appeared, materializing out of thin air.  “We’re talking decorated admirals and generals.  _Decorated._   I checked them out anyway, and there was nothing.”

Steve squinted a little, sweeping his eyes quickly over the images.  He didn’t recognize any of them, but their view of the American at the meeting in Prague had been poor.  “Tony, do you have a recording of these men talking?”

“J?”

“Working on it, sir,” the AI responded.  A moment later, the computer played clips of each of the committee members from the hearing while displaying pertinent information to the left.  None of the voices seemed familiar (except for General Sanders – Steve had met him once when he’d consulted on a project for the army a year or so ago.  He was a cross man but an honorable one.  Steve didn’t think he could be involved). 

Just when he was about to write this off as a lost cause, a younger, male voice came over the speakers.  “Agent Romanoff, you should know that there are some sitting on this committee who would call that treason.  Perhaps Senator Stern is correct that, given your service record both for this country and against it, that you belong in a penitentiary, not mouthing off on Capitol Hill and continuing to evade delivering substantive answers as to who you are and what you’ve done.”

“Stop,” Steve ordered sharply.  He thought a moment, tipping his head back.  Then he glanced to his left.  “Sam?”

Sam shrugged.  “Sounds kinda like him,” he agreed, though his tone suggested he wasn’t entirely sure.  “You’re the one with the super memory, though.”

Steve tried to picture it, crouching behind the lumber in the top of that skyscraper, the voices angry and arguing behind them.  “JARVIS, can you play it again?”

“Certainly, Captain.”

The man’s voice returned.  This time Steve was much more certain.  He turned to Tony.  “That’s the guy from Prague.”

Tony reached his hands into the holographic display and drew the files toward him.  Everyone gathered closer.  “Jeremy Wenham.  He’s the junior senator from Vermont.”  Tony read through the data scrolling by with incredible alacrity.  “Not much sticking out.  If this guy’s HYDRA, though, this is bad.  He’s got his hands in not just the Armed Services Committee, but the Foreign Intelligence Committee and he consults for NATO.  He’s also a long-time friend of the head of the FBI, Charles Lansky.  They served together in the Gulf War.  Navy SEALs.”

“How does a junior senator get this much power?” Bruce asked.

“He’s a decorated war vet from a prestigious political family.  And he won the Medal of Honor for his actions in Kuwait.  This guy’s well-liked, well-respected,” Tony said.

“And no connection to Stern?” Sharon asked.

“Nope.  Not beyond this hearing.”

“Or SHIELD?” Hill said.  “It doesn’t make sense.  Someone so influential in foreign intelligence would have had to have been working with SHIELD.  I don’t remember Fury mentioning Wenham, and there weren’t many people in Washington with this sort of clout that he didn’t know.”

Tony flung his hands up in frustration.  “I don’t know what you want me to say.  I’ll run it again, but I already went through all of this.  There’s no connection to SHIELD.”

“Yes, there is,” Steve said.  His eyes narrowed as he stepped closer to the floating images on Wenham.  He’d never really used the holographic workstations before so his first attempt to grab the picture was pretty awkward.  He got it, though, and enlarged it.  And he quickly found that the glint of recognition tickling the back of his mind was completely correct.  He’d seen a picture like this before.  “His SEAL team was dispatched to rescue hostages taken by ELN rebels in Bogota in 1989.”  It was an image of the team, of a much younger version of Wenham, standing outside the US Embassy.  It was clearly the aftermath, soldiers maintaining order in the wake of taking out the rebels who’d stormed the empty basement.  Sharon was completely correct; this _couldn’t_ be a coincidence.  “Alexander Pierce’s daughter was one of those hostages.”

“How the hell do you know that?” Tony demanded.  “That’s nowhere in any of the files I have.”

“When they had me prisoner, Pierce told me.”

Tony seemed surprised for a moment.  Then he gave a short breath, rubbing his forehead.  “Well… fuck.  JARVIS, run with this.  I want everything.  Family.  Friends.  Co-workers.  Business contacts.  This is it, the way these HYDRA and Red Room assholes are getting their poison into the country.  There’s got to be _something_ that–”

Natasha was suddenly up and out of her chair.  “Excuse me,” she gasped, and then she was walking quickly out of the command center.  Everybody watched dumbly for a moment as JARVIS opened the glass doors for her.  She was jogging lightly through them, turning sharply to the right with a hand clamped over her mouth, and rushing down the corridor.

Steve swallowed worriedly.  “Hold on,” he said to everyone, and he jolted to follow her.

He was so concerned he didn’t notice that Bruce had come with him to the door until the doctor took his arm gently.  “Steve, wait.  Wait.”  Steve gave a shaking breath, stopping just outside the command center.  Bruce watched him in concern, too, and for some reason that was frightening.  “Listen, I was going to approach you about this later when things calmed down, but it doesn’t seem like that’s going to happen.  I know Natasha’s been through a lot these last weeks, months even, but she really needs to let someone check her out.  This isn’t exactly my area of expertise, but I offered when you guys got here last night.  Beyond a cursory exam, she refused anything else.  She should really have bloodwork and some tests done.  And an ultrasound.”

“Doctor Banner–”

“She has significant scarring to both her ovaries and her uterus from the procedures used to sterilize her, at least that was according to Fine and SHIELD’s reports.  I have no reason to doubt it.  If that’s the case, she definitely needs care for this pregnancy.”  Bruce dropped his voice further.  “And I don’t want to sound like the animals in that lab they were holding you in when I say this, but this baby is unlike any baby in the history of humanity.  There could be complications.  I’m not trying to scare you, but she _needs_ to let someone look at her, both for her sake and for the sake of the baby.  You need to convince her.”

Steve couldn’t fathom this.  Honestly, the concept of it all was so wild and unexpected that he still couldn’t quite get his head around it, and now there was chance that there could be something wrong?  His heart thumped painfully against his sternum, both at what Bruce was saying and at the prospect of trying to coax Natasha into doing something she didn’t want to.  He said nothing for what felt like a long while before sighing shakily and looking down at his feet.  He nodded.  “Alright.  When?”

“We have time now, and the sooner the better.  I’ll meet you back in medical.”

Steve nodded again without really realizing it.  Then he was walking without realizing it, following her without realizing it.  He was outside the ladies’ room down at the end of the hall without thinking to go there.  He could hear the water running through the door.  There was fear unlike anything he’d ever known churning deep in his gut.  This was a sick terror, something that was irrational and weighty, so different from the high of adrenaline or the fear before a fight.  Steve sighed again, trying to gather himself.  “Nat?” he called.  He rapped on the door with his knuckles, pushing it open slightly.  “Nat, it’s me.  Can I come in?”

She didn’t answer.  He waited a moment more, ignoring some ridiculous hesitation about going into a woman’s bathroom before pushing the door all the way open and venturing inside.  She was at the sink, leaning over it slightly.  She was flushed, her hair dangling around her pale face.  She looked ill.  Small.  Weak.  It made that fear in the depths of his stomach sink lower, like a rock.  Fear and shame.  That storm was building.  “Nat…”

“I’m alright,” she snapped.  “Just go away.”

 _Not a chance._ “Did you get sick?”  She glared at him in the mirror sharply enough that he stopped mid-step.  Seeing her warning was sufficiently heeded, she dropped her head again and cupped her hands under the thickly running water.  She sucked it in her mouth, swished it, and spat it back out.  The subsequent sigh shook her entire frame.  Steve watched helplessly, not knowing what to do.  Now that they were free from HYDRA and the Red Room, the enormity of the situation was starting to sink in.  Natasha looked so haggard, so lost.  So much like she had after Crimea.  Bruce was right.  She needed care.  “What can I do to help?” he finally asked.

“Oh, I think you’ve done plenty already, Rogers,” she said snidely, glaring at him anew.  Steve watched his own expression slacken with hurt in the mirror, his cheeks paling.  Natasha’s scowl fractured at that, and she closed her eyes and wearily leaned into the counter.  She shut off the water before rubbing her forehead.  Eventually she gathered herself enough to flip her hair over her shoulder (when had it gotten so long?) and turn to him.  “Sorry.”

“’S okay,” he said.

“I’m fine.  I just…  I need a minute to myself.”

There was no sense in delaying or pussy-footing about this.  He wanted to just come out and say it.  So he did.  “Bruce is waiting for us downstairs.  He wants to take a look at you.”

Natasha stiffened.  “I already told him I don’t want to.”

“I know you don’t, but you need to.”  He paused, trying to find the right words amidst all of his own anxieties and worries.  He was so newly freed of his plights that dealing with this, with hers…  He didn’t know if he could.  “I know that being back there, having them… touch you the way they did and treat you like they did…  That probably dredged up all sorts of bad things.”

“You have no idea,” she seethed, but her voice tremored and her glare faltered.

“But you have to realize that no one’s gonna hurt you here.  Bruce said he’d be glad to find you another doctor if you’d prefer–”

“No.”

That was so curt, but he could read a litany of unrestrained emotions with that one calmly spoken word.  “Then let Bruce do it.”  She said nothing.  She didn’t move from the counter.  She didn’t even look at him.  Steve tentatively took a step closer.  He’d seen her like this before, troubled and burdened by her past, slipping back down into the darkness.  Since that night in his apartment all those months ago, it had never been too hard to pull her back.  Now, though…  He thought of that folder from the archive.  Her folder.  He’d put it and the file on the Winter Soldier in his closet in the room Tony had given them, hidden it under some of his clothes that were still here from the last time he’d stayed in Stark Tower more than a month ago.  That was her horrible past.  He’d considered giving it to her, but he’d decided against it.  Not when she was like this.  _You might not want to pull on that thread._

He banished those thoughts.  There would be time for them later.  Right now he needed to get her to see Bruce.  That was the most important thing.  “It’ll be alright.”  That made her angrier, and she hotly kept her gaze averted.   Maybe he didn’t have the right to say that.  Or this.  “I’ll be with you every step of the way.”

“What if I don’t want to go that way?”

He wished he’d misunderstood her, but he knew he hadn’t.  The idea of it sent chills up his back and lodged a spike of ice in his heart.  It wasn’t just that it wasn’t something in which he believed.  He wasn’t as naïve (or as old-fashioned) as everyone assumed, and he knew women these days, Natasha included, had a choice.  It was that they were back here, having the same conversation they’d had in the HYDRA truck, only now relief and desperate love wasn’t driving them.  The need to _fight_ and _protect_ had been stripped away, and reality was taking its toll.  “I…  I can’t force you to…”

“No,” she said, her eyes hot with anger and wet with tears.  “You can’t.  No one can.  Do you get that?”  He stared at her, trying to shield himself from the venomous rage he saw boiling under the surface.  Until now she’d acted so strong, so sure, but it had been for his sake.  And it was all bleeding out, the doubt and insecurity.  The Red Room doctors touching her and objectifying her and treating her like their test subject once more had done deep damage, and he was the one who had to help her now.  “Do you?  Huh?  It’s my body!  Not theirs!  _Not_ yours!”

That hurt.  “No one is saying that your body’s not–”

“I’m Black Widow,” she hissed, turning finally and rounding on him.  The anger in her eyes was damning.  “It may not be much of an identity, but it’s _mine_.  I’m not a mother.  I never had one, never wanted one.  That’s not _who I am._ ”

“Nat, just–”

“You don’t own me,” she hissed.

That _really_ hurt, like she was wrenching everything she’d ever given him – her friendship and her trust and her heart – right out of his fingers.  And it hurt more than she was grouping _him_ in with the monsters who’d hurt her in the past.  Steve forced himself to stay calm.  This was the damage talking.  The pain.  She needed to get it out.  He could do that for her, just as she’d done it for him.  “I know I don’t.  I don’t own anything you haven’t given me.”

She didn’t even hear him.  “When I was running from them, I kept telling myself I needed to keep the baby safe.  Keep myself safe.  Like some goddamn mission.  That’s because that’s what I do.  _Follow_ the mission.  Brushov’s.  SHIELD’s.  Doesn’t matter.  I kept telling myself that I needed to fight for the baby.  Run for the baby.  Kill for the baby.  Even back there in that nightmare, it was always for the baby.”

“That’s what a mother does,” Steve said softly.

“I’m not a mother!” she raged.  “I can’t be a mother!  I don’t want to be a mother!  Not for anyone!  Not for you!”  Steve winced.  She looked away, shaking.  “God, I wanted to end this _so badly._   I just should have done it, but I couldn’t make myself because of you!  And then I got low and started wishing I’d just miscarry, that my fucked up body would give up on this whole damn thing and end it for me.  But it didn’t, because _you’re_ the father!  And you don’t ever quit, do you.”  It was hurting more and more.  This was weeks of her pain, of her fear and resentment, of her suffering alone with this awful and weighty decision.  Steve just stood there and took it.  “This thing…  It’s been all I have been thinking about.  I dream about it.  I worry.  I hate myself and I hate you.  This is insane!  You know what we do.  In the last six months _alone_ , we have _both_ been shot nearly to death.  We’re Avengers.  SHIELD agents.  We have enemies that want to _kill_ us.  It’s ridiculous to think a baby could fit into any of that, even if we wanted it to.  Not to mention the fact that this kid is _never_ going to be safe.  Haven’t you heard?  I’m carrying around the miracle baby!  The next step in human evolution!”  He winced at the bitterness in her voice.  She was getting more and more riled, her words coming faster and faster.  “And I know how I acted back in that truck.  I was lying to myself, lying to you.  I was so full of bullshit.  Believing my own lies, yet again.  I don’t want this.  I don’t want to see it.  I don’t want to hear it.  _I don’t want it!_ ”

That was enough.  With her the way she was, he was afraid to get any closer.  But he did.  She couldn’t hurt him, not enough to actually damage him before he could stop her.  He yanked his injured arm out of the sling, flung it away to the side, grabbed her gently, and pulled her close.  She struggled for a moment, fists against his chest and rigid in his arms, before relaxing with half a sob into his shoulder.  He let her calm down, catch her breath.  Aside from the first spots of warm wetness seeping into his shirt, she wasn’t crying.  Still, he tightened his arms around her for comfort, relieved to finally be able to hold her after all those hours in the truck.  She’d been so strong, so brave, holding herself together.  She was entitled to this.

Carefully he wove his fingers through her hair to cup the back of her head.  “I’m not going to force you to do anything,” he said again, this time more confidently.  “I never would.  You know me.  You know that.”  She said nothing.  “This isn’t something we planned.  It wasn’t even a possibility.  I’m still lost, Nat.  I don’t know what I think or feel, either.”  He swallowed, gathering up his courage.  She needed to hear what he had to say, even if it hurt to say it.  “It’s not too late.  If you want to end it, then…”

Now she did sob.  “I don’t know,” she moaned.  “That’s the whole problem.  I’m still so scared.  Getting away from them…  It didn’t solve anything.”  They stood still, leaning into each other and searching for some strength.  Steve stroked his fingers through her hair, closing his eyes and trying to clear his head.  Eventually, after what felt like an exceedingly long time, she sighed.  “I do know one thing I want.”  Her voice was a wet murmur against him.  “The same thing I wanted before.  To go back.”  She clung tighter.  “Can you take me back, Steve?”

He couldn’t, and they both knew it so he said nothing to her request.  Instead, he squeezed her against him, trying not to feel the slight bulge in her midsection pushing up against his hip.  No matter what happened with HYDRA and the Red Room and Omega Red, no matter how they overcame whatever threats were building in this shadows…  This was permanent.  It wasn’t going to change.  The lives they’d led before were gone.  Whatever happened, they weren’t who they had been.  Not Black Widow.  Not Captain America.  _We can’t ever go back._

But that didn’t mean they couldn’t go forward.  _Start over._

Steve slipped a hand under Natasha’s chin and lifted her face gently.  “A few days ago, I thought you had betrayed me.  I thought you were one of them.”  Her eyes darkened and she tried to pull away.  “No, please.  Just listen to me.”  He heaved a slow breath.  “I thought Black Widow betrayed me.  I’d convinced myself of it, made myself doubt everything I knew because of how angry I was that you lied to me…  But even though the evidence kept piling up, I started to realize that you could _never_ betray me.  Yes, you’re Black Widow.  You own that.  But it’s not all you are, because you do own your body and your mind and your heart.  They didn’t make you.  And they don’t define you.  You’re not a traitor or a murderer or a liar.  You’re a good person.  And Black Widow can be whoever you want her to be.”  She relaxed slightly, her eyes searching his.  “I mean it, Nat.  And we’re going to get through this, whatever it is, together.  I wasn’t there for you before, but I am now.  And I will be forever.”  He kissed her gently, sweetly.  She responded slowly but in kind.

It was another while before they pulled away.  Steve looked down to find Natasha calm again.  Quiet.  Comforted.  She managed a teary nod and a cleansing breath.  She cupped his face, brushing her fingers against his cheek.  “I liked the scruff,” she commented.

He grunted in a mixture of shock, amusement, and relief.  “You watched me shave it.  Shoulda said somethin’.”

“Didn’t realize I’d miss it.  Kinda cliché, I know, but it made you look rugged.”

“Not a word I associate with Captain America.”

“No.”  She fully leaned into him, letting him bear her weight completely.  She tucked her head under his chin and made absolutely no effort to pull away.  All the fire and fortitude was gone from her, and she seemed small and defeated.  Deflated.  Submissive.

As much as he disliked that, he let her have it.  He wanted to give it to her as long as she wanted it, but he couldn’t.  He sighed slowly against the crown of her head.  “Will you let Bruce do this?  Please?”

She said nothing in the tense eternity that followed.  He could hardly stand not to push her.  However, eventually she nodded against his chest, and he nearly sagged himself in relief.  He moved back, taking her hand and lifting it to his mouth to kiss her knuckles.  “Thank you.”

She swallowed thickly, nodding again, and Steve quickly led her away before he lost his nerve or she changed her mind.

* * *

If Bruce noticed that Natasha had been upset, he wisely chose not to say anything.  He offered up a disarming smile from where he stood near the room’s hospital bed.  “Here.  Come lay down.”

Natasha was acting.  Steve could tell.  She was cool again, composed.  Icy, even.  But she stiffened when Bruce said that, lingering by the door.  She was on edge, like a cat warily wandering into what it feared to be a cage.  She was struggling with this.  Steve carefully set his hand on the small of her back and prodded her forward.  She looked at him, annoyed but not enough to pull away.  Together they went to the bed, and Natasha pushed herself up onto it.  Steve sat in the chair beside it, noticing how stiff and unyielding she was, how much fear was in her eyes.  He said nothing, but he kept his hand over hers.

Bruce came over with supplies to draw blood.  “Just going to get some samples.  If anything bothers you, you let me know.”

“Alright,” Natasha said lifelessly.

“And if you prefer someone else–”

“No.”

Bruce worked on collecting the blood.  “This Doctor Fine…  He tell you how far along you are?”

“He thought about eleven weeks.  That was a week ago, so you can do the math.”

Bruce nodded.  He finished with his samples, taking his vials of blood and setting them aside.  Steve watched, feeling oddly out of place even though this _was_ his place.  He knew men nowadays were significantly more involved in pregnancy, child birth, and raising kids than they had been when he’d grown up.  The gravity of being here was a tad overwhelming, the wonders of modern medicine notwithstanding.   “Any complaints?” Bruce asked.

Natasha coolly arched an eyebrow that silently asked, _Are you serious?_   Bruce smiled and nodded, blushing a little.  “Right.  Aside from being chased halfway across the world by HYDRA and its vampire monster.”

“I’m fine.  Same as yesterday.”

Bruce wasn’t put off by Natasha’s chilly response.  He was rolling a cart closer that had a screen, a touch interface, and some equipment attached to it.  “Wanna pull your shirt up and your pants down?  Neither has to come off.”  Natasha hesitated, watching as Bruce readied whatever this machine was.  “Have you had an ultrasound yet?”

Natasha shook her head.  Now the stoic mask cracked again and she pulled her hand from Steve’s.  “No.  I’ve heard the heartbeat a few times.”

Steve watched dumbly as Bruce grabbed a long probe-like thing with a fairly bulbous head.  He felt like a moron, but he had to ask.  “What’s an ultrasound?”

“It’s a method of using sound waves to see inside the body,” Bruce explained as he switched the machine on.  He glanced over at Steve again, probably noticing that Steve looked flabbergasted and as white as a ghost, so he went on.  “It’s a very routine procedure in pregnancy to get an idea of how big the baby is, if there are any obvious abnormalities or issues, and so on.  Don’t worry, Steve.  It’s safe.  Do I want to know what happened to your sling?”

The question took Steve aback.  He was so lost in the fact that, in a minute and thanks to modern technology he hadn’t even really known existed until now, he was going to be able to _see_ his baby.  His baby that he hadn’t even known existed until a couple of days ago.  That was a little much to take in.  “Um…”

“When we’re done here, I’m giving you another one.  And you need to wear it.  I know you’re used to shaking stuff off, but you need to treat your shoulder like a normal person would because it’s healing like a normal person’s does.  And that means taking it easy and using the sling to keep it immobile.”  The mother-hennish note in Bruce’s voice was fairly shocking.  Apparently, so was the gel he squirted on Natasha’s lower abdomen because she jerked and saddled him with an irritated glare.  All the bravado slid from his face.  “Sorry.  Forgot to warm it.”

Natasha relaxed slowly with a short breath.  “Let’s get this over with,” was all she said.

Bruce glanced at Steve again before nodding.  “Right.”  He took the probe and pressed its end to Natasha’s belly.  Steve looked more carefully now and saw the slight rounded bulge there that he hadn’t seen before.  He released a slow breath, trying to calm nerves that were rattled in ways he’d never imagined.  The screen came to life, black and white at first.  He didn’t know what he was seeing.  Then Bruce adjusted something, and the image turned three-dimensional.  He swept the probe left and right for a bit before he settled on a spot he liked.  “Okay.  I’m not exactly an expert, but I think…”

Steve stared at the image, trying to make it out.  This was exciting and horrifying and all kinds of amazing.  “Is that…  Is that it?”

“Yep.”  Bruce pressing a little harder on Natasha’s belly, adjusting the angle slightly.  The three-dimensional picture shifted on the screen.  Steve stared, the world fading around him.  He couldn’t believe it.  He couldn’t believe he was _seeing_ his baby.  _His baby._  “Two arms and two legs, so that’s good.”  Bruce narrowed his eyes, gazing at the screen, adjusting a few controls via the touch interface.  “There’s the spine.  And Fine was off a little.  Judging from the length of the femur, the baby’s about fourteen weeks.”  He took some more measurements before moving the probe again.  “Here’s the head.”  The image shifted upward slightly.  Steve couldn’t make sense of it at first.  Then he saw a face.  Eyes that were closed.  A nose.  Lips.  Lips moving.  _Sucking._   It was amazing.  It was beautiful.

Steve’s heart swelled, straining in his chest, and suddenly he couldn’t breathe but it was okay.  He felt Natasha’s hand gently slide over his again where it rested on the bed.  Her skin was smooth, warm, as her fingers wove their way through his.  He swallowed down his racing heart where it felt stuck in his throat and glanced at her, but she wasn’t looking at him.  She was watching the screen, as transfixed, terrified, and awestruck as he was.  Her baby.  His.  _Their baby._   All the pain they’d suffered to get this incredible, unexpected moment disappeared like it had never been there at all.  All of the anguish, the fear, the doubts…  He gasped out something that was mostly not a sob.  “Wow.”

She finally looked at him, pale and worried and uncertain, but he smiled at her and she tentatively smiled back.  Bruce smiled, too.  “Let’s see if we can get a look at the placenta here…  Hold on.”  Bruce’s brow furrowed in confusion, and the image changed wildly into a blurry mess.  His mouth fell open.  “Uh…  You guys aren’t going to believe this…”  He paused as he kept adjusting the image.

“What, doc?” Steve finally asked in exasperation.  “What?”

“There are two,” Bruce breathed in surprise.

“Two _what?”_

“Two babies.  Twins.”

Natasha sat up.  “That’s not possible,” she gasped, vehemently shaking her head.

“My baseline of possible has wildly shifted these last few years,” Bruce replied.

“I heard the heartbeat before!  There was just one!”

“Sometimes it’s hard to tell.”  Bruce angled the screen more toward them.  “Look.”  He pointed at a fuzzy image that was slowly coming into focus.  “Here’s the first baby.  But this is another arm.  And a leg.”  He moved the probe further to the right.  Sure enough, there was another tiny body.  Another face.  “This is the second baby.  Two separate placentas, amniotic sacs…  They’re fraternal.”

Now breathing went from difficult to nearly impossible.  Steve kept trying to focus, trying and failing.  Natasha was gripping his hand tight enough that it nearly hurt.  The room was silent as Bruce continued searching.  Steve turned to Natasha and found her pale and almost trembling.  He took her hand with his other, untangling her iron-grip from his skin and folding her fingers between his own.  That made her look at him, lock gazes with him, and he smiled faintly.

“This is incredible,” Bruce said, drawing Steve’s attention.  He was moving the probe quickly now, examining and analyzing.  “The super soldier serum in, well…  Every time you guys had unprotected sex, the serum must have healed some of the damage in your uterus, Natasha, until the point where fertilization and implantation of the embryos became possible.  I don’t see a fraction of the scarring and injury SHIELD had noted in your medical file.”  He shook his head in amazement.  “We really need to do more testing.  This is the first instance that we know of of the serum affecting someone else’s physiology.”

Natasha practically flinched.  “Doctor Banner–” Steve started.

“Do you guys want to know what they are?”

Bruce’s question took them both aback.  “What?” Steve asked.  He was starting to sound like some kind of a broken record of flustered incompetence.

“The sex.  Do you want to know?”

At a complete loss yet again, he turned to Natasha, trying to gauge his reaction off of hers.  Hers was about as confident and composed as his, her eyes blankly roving the screen.  His didn’t think his throat and mouth could manage much right then, so he nodded.

Bruce shifted the probe so the screen showed the first baby.  “This one…  I think this is a girl.”

Steve couldn’t believe it.  All he saw were legs (he thought).  “You can tell that?”

“It’s not so much the presence of something as it is the lack of something else,” Bruce explained with a wry smile.  “And this one…”  He gave a little laugh.  “See there?  Oh, yeah.  Definitely a boy.”

A girl _and_ a boy.

Twins.

The sound of Steve’s back hitting the plastic of his chair was loud.  He felt the room spinning.  _Two babies._   He hadn’t even fully processed the idea of _one_ child, that he was someone’s _father_ , and now…  “But they’re okay, right?  Healthy?”

Bruce nodded emphatically.  “More than okay.  They look perfect.”

Natasha couldn’t hold it together anymore.  Her control had been eroding, the impassive façade slipping as the moment became more and more emotional.  She turned on her side away from the screen, the probe knocked away.  Steve could see the tears in her eyes.  Helplessness left him reeling for a moment.  “Could you give us–”

“Sure,” Bruce said.  He handed Steve a box of tissues and stood from his seat.  He turned everything off and walked outside the room, trying not to seem worried or bothered.

Steve turned back to Natasha.  She was breathing deeply, her eyes wide and wet as she looked up at the ceiling.  He could see how hard she was trying to keep it in, to contain it.  Feeling useless, he used a tissue to clean the gel off her stomach, threw that into the trash beside the bed, and moved to pull her shirt back down and her sweatpants up.  His hand brushed over the bump, and he couldn’t help but linger there, touching tentatively.  He _felt_ them.  Firm and warm under his palm.

He was surprised when her hand came down to take his.  But she didn’t pull him away.  He found her staring at him, eyes glistening still, but she was so much stronger than she gave herself credit for.  He’d always known, always seen it, even when she hadn’t trusted herself.  Still, there was so much darkness they’d barely survived, and on top of that all of the tumult of her emotions now, hormones and fears and insecurities…  Clint slowly dying, one room over…  She coveted control, thrived in the power that came with it, and she had none.  _None._   “I can’t do this,” she whispered.

He didn’t think he could say anything.  This terrified him.  It had been hard enough considering ending the pregnancy before, but now, now when he’d just seen what they stood to lose…  He didn’t want to think about it or seriously consider it or even discuss it.  He knew he had to because he hadn’t lied.  He would _never_ force her into something she didn’t want or something that would hurt her, but…  His heart was so heavy with fear, so full of love for her and for _them_ , that he didn’t think he could take it.

“I can’t do this, Steve.”

“Natasha…”

“I don’t know how.  I don’t know how to… how to be a mother.  So I need you to help me.  I need you.”  He opened his eyes that he’d apparently squeezed shut and looked up at her.  She grinned weakly through her tears.  “I can’t do this alone.”

He gasped a happy sob and leaned over her, kissing her desperately.  He tasted tears, hers and his.  Her fingers went up to his hair, tight, possessive.  But she was relaxing, regaining herself.  Physicality always did that for her, always anchored her and strengthened her.  He understood why now.  After a moment, she scooted over without his asking, and he laid beside her on the narrow bed, pulling her against him and holding tight.  They didn’t say anything, each reeling with it all, with how quickly and completely their lives had changed again.  His face was buried into her neck, their hands still intertwined on her belly.  “Two of them,” he whispered, unable to keep a bit of giddy grin off of his face.

“Yeah,” she whispered back.  “Because one wasn’t terrifying enough, I guess.”

He chuckled, kissing her until she sighed and was warm and relaxed against him.  “It’ll be alright,” he murmured into her neck, into her cheek, into her lips.  “I know it will be.  You’ll see, love.  You’ll see.”  He claimed her mouth gently.  She was pliant, perhaps too exhausted to process anything more, but her tender deepening of the kiss was enough to hearten him.  When he pulled away for a breath, he smiled again.  “I’ll be with you, every step of the way.  I’ll protect you, even if you don’t need it.”  He was anticipating her denial.  Surprisingly, there wasn’t one coming.  Just a long, slow breath.  He kissed her again, not making much of an effort to tame his excitement or love.  It felt good to feel good.  So amazingly, wonderfully _good._   And it felt good to be brave, to be strong, to be her source of strength.  It made him feel right and whole, and he should never have let that go.  “It’s gonna be fine.  I promise.”

She closed her eyes, sighing against his lips.  She was fighting to find her confidence.  Struggling to believe.  Trying to find faith, faith in him and in herself.  “You always keep your promises,” she murmured, taking hope from his hope just like she had so many times before.

“You know I do.”  And just like so many times before, he had faith enough for them both.              


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE:** I want to thank everyone reading and commenting. You guys absolutely overwhelm me with support, and I can't even tell you how much it means to me. So, uh… Warning on this chapter for major character death. Just remember, though, this is based on comics. No one ever stays dead, right?
> 
> Trust me: no one does ;-).

Sam wasn’t going to lie.  He was still worried about Steve.  _Really_ worried about Steve.  And about Natasha.  That appeared to be all he was good for these last weeks.  Worrying.  He sure as shit hadn’t managed to do much to protect either of them.  He supposed it hadn’t been his responsibility (or his place), but as ridiculous as it was, he felt it was his fault they’d been hurt again.  Even more than Stark or any of the others, he’d been there from the beginning of this fiasco.  Steve had come to him for help back in DC, come to his apartment seeking refuge, and he’d whole-heartedly thrown himself into the conflict, eager to get involved and even more eager (and a tad proud) to be fighting alongside Captain America.  Since then, he’d watched helplessly as Steve had been tortured and Natasha had been shot.  He’d done frighteningly little to pull Steve out of his PTSD as they’d hunted for Barnes.  He’d quickly cast aside any trust or friendship with Natasha to believe she was a traitor.  And he’d left Steve over in Europe despite his reservations, and that had led to the other man yet again being taken captive by HYDRA.

Some friend he was turning out to be.

Then again, he was just one pararescue trooper ( _ex-_ pararescue trooper) going up against madmen and brainwashed assassins and monsters and evil that was decades old.  What did he think he could possibly do against that?

“Are they alright in there?” he asked, turning to Bruce where he and Tony were examining the carbonadium again.  Over the last few days, the two scientists had done a lot of that.  Sam knew they were trying to figure out how it worked, which, considering what it was allowing Omega Red to do, seemed a rather important step in understanding their enemy.  However, the two of them were just a tad like kids with a new toy, and that was annoying at a time like this.

“I think they are,” Bruce answered.  The doctor had said nothing after leaving the examination room with Steve and Natasha.  That had been more than an hour ago, and no one else had gone in or come out.  Bruce had looked a strange combination of worried, excited, and shocked.  Beyond asking if everything was okay, Sam hadn’t felt right pressing him for information.  At least he hadn’t then.  Now his concern was mounting.  It really wasn’t his business.  He kept trying to tell himself that.  It wasn’t much of a comfort.

“You know, this stuff is fucked up,” Tony commented.

“What, HYDRA hunting after Captain America’s baby to fix their broken monster super soldier thing?” Sam asked bitterly.  _Fucked up doesn’t really describe that._

Tony quirked an eyebrow and tipped his head as he ran some sort of tool over the spike of carbonadium.  “Well, there is that, but that’s not what I mean.  This metal… it reacts to people.”

“We know that,” Bruce replied, turning to one of his pads.

“Yeah, but every time you touch it, it throws its radiation signature totally out of whack.  Like its own chemical properties are influenced by yours.”  Tony shook his head, clearly befuddled.  “You’re the physicist, but I’m pretty sure that breaks a few of your fundamental laws of nature.”

Sam narrowed his eyes.  “If it was really enchanted by Asgardian magic or… whatever, doesn’t that mean the fundamental laws of nature have kinda been thrown out the window?”

“Probably,” Tony said with a shrug.  “We really ought to have Rogers come out here and touch this thing.  As interesting as it is watching the signature dance all over for you, I’m willing to bet it’ll be even more spectacular for him.”

Sam didn’t like the sound of that.  “Why?”

Bruce sighed.  “Because Omega Red’s powers work on him.  I mean, at least to the point where the carbonadium can facilitate the drain of biochemical energy.  They don’t work on me – well, not on the Other Guy.  And they don’t work on Thor.”

Tony nodded, setting his scanner down.  “Right, so it’s probably more than just Gamma radiation that causes what we’re seeing.  Or specifically Vita-Rays?  I don’t know.  We need more data.  And – speak of the devil!  Here it comes.”

Sam looked down the hallway that led from the lab to the hospital rooms and saw Steve walking toward them.  He looked… nervous, but in a happy way.  Contented.  Maybe not completely so, but there was light in his eyes that hadn’t been there before.  There was energy in his step.  There was half of a curl of a smile on his lips.  “Here comes what?” he asked.

“Our guinea pig,” Tony explained.  He gestured Steve closer.  “Get over here and hold this thing so we can see if it zaps you or you zap it.”

Sam shot Tony an irritated glare.  Steve’s face crinkled in confusion.  “What?”

Before Tony could say anything further, though, JARVIS’ voice cut through the lab.  “Sir, I have gathered the data you requested on Arkady Rossovich.”

Tony set all of his stuff down and went to the holographic work terminal.  “Sweet.  Lay it on us, J.  And have you found anything on Wenham?”

“Not yet,” the AI replied, somewhat regretful and perhaps even sheepish.  Sam couldn’t help but wonder if Tony had actually programmed JARVIS to emulate human emotions this well or if it wasn’t his imagination.

“Well, chop chop.”

The group gathered behind Stark, Bruce and Tony talking in long scientific terms again as they waited for JARVIS to gather and present his findings.  Sam clasped Steve on the shoulder as he approached.  “You okay, man?”

Steve faltered, but again, not really in a bad way.  The light in his eyes grew brighter, and Sam could have sworn he saw the twinkle of tears for a moment before the other man blinked them away.  “Yeah,” he said with a short, almost quivering breath.  “Yeah, I’m fine.  Natasha’s fine, too.  She, um…  God, Sam.  Talk about a light in the darkness.”  He gave a shaking, shocked breath.  “She’s having twins.”

Sam didn’t process that for a moment.  And Tony had overheard their hushed conversation.  “She what?” the inventor asked, slack-jawed and surprised.

Steve swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing, and nodded, _smiling._   He hadn’t seen Steve smile, really smile, in what felt like forever.  Not since Steve had come to the VA to see him right before everything had gone to hell.  He was practically beaming, a shade of fear (fear over _fatherhood,_ not fear over HYDRA or SHIELD or anything else) dancing in his bright eyes.  “Yeah, twins.”

“Holy…”  Tony trailed off, rendered speechless.  That was becoming a rather common occurrence, that the unflappable Tony Stark was completely bereft of something to say.  It never lasted, though.  “You don’t do anything halfway, do you.”  He turned a somewhat annoyed gaze at Bruce.  “You knew and you didn’t say anything for all this time.  What happened to Science Bros?”

“For an hour at the most,” Bruce replied in something of a huff.  “And it’s not your business.”

Sam turned back to Steve.  “But they’re okay, right?  And Natasha’s okay?”

Steve nodded.  “Yeah.  She’s fine.  She’s sleeping.”

“Good,” Bruce commented with a firm nod.  He folded his arms across his chest.  “She needed it.  This much stress isn’t good.  We need to keep her calm.  Twins doesn’t necessarily make the pregnancy more dangerous, but they do make it more complicated.  She needs to rest, take everything easy.”

“Wonderful,” Tony commented wryly.  “We’re kinda in the middle of a crisis, in case that escaped you.  Not exactly conducive to rest and relaxation.  And a giant vampire thing may or may not be hunting her.”

Sam expected Steve to take offense at that, but he didn’t.  His brain looked firmly lodged back in that room with Natasha, even though his body had somehow made its way out here.  “She’s alright,” he assured again.  “I, uh…  Can’t quite get a hold of this.  Or anything, I guess.  Sorry.”

“Well, while Captain Virility screws his head on straight, let’s look at this data,” Tony declared, “because we still have a plot to stop.”  He reached into the files JARVIS had loaded into the display and expanded them.  “Alright, what have we got…  Not much, apparently.”  Tony’s eyes quickly scanned through the few files.  “Arkady Rossovich.  Born March 19th, 1977, reportedly in a village outside of Kursk.  From there we have a whole lot of nothing for about twenty years.  Then…”  Tony blanched.  “Well, this guy was a monster before they made him into a monster.  According to the Russian police, he committed a slew of murders in 1999.  More in the early 2000s.  He’s essentially a serial killer, praying mostly on women.  No obvious motive other than being evil and insane.  All said and done, when they arrested him in 2005 they had him linked to more than twenty killings.”

“Lovely,” Sam muttered.

“He spent five years in Black Dolphin Prison until…  Oh, guess who signed his release form.”  The image of an obviously scanned piece of paper came up, JARVIS translating the Cyrillic.  “None other than our good friend, Aleksander Lukin.”  Tony shook his head.  “This is dated January 5th, 2010.  After that, there’s no more information.”

“Lukin just took him out of one of Russia’s supposedly highest security prisons?” Bruce asked incredulously.

Tony read the form as it was translated.  “Apparently for some sort of government testing program.  They didn’t even bother to hide that it was human testing.  There are other forms like this for other inmates.  How much you want to bet they were all shining examples of the best of society?”  He shook his head.  “I guess they thought no one would care about a few missing murderers.”

“So they took Rossovich, turned him into Omega Red, only their version of the super soldier serum didn’t work right,” Sam surmised.

Tony nodded.  “Seems that way.  And they tried to fix the bad metabolic processes with the original super soldier serum.  Natasha said something about Lukin trading the Winter Soldier to Pierce in order to get access to your blood, Cap.  If you found blood samples in Zürich that dated back to 2012, obviously they’ve been trying to fix this for a while.”  Tony seemed a bit at a loss.  “You know, at the risk of sounding really cliché and stupid, does anyone else think this whole thing sounds like good versus evil?”

Bruce actually smiled softly at that.  “Isn’t that what it always is?”

Tony gave him a glance that spoke volumes of just how serious he was.  “Think about it.  This Rossovich guy was selected for some super-secret government program to create super soldiers, just like Steve was, only Lukin and his ilk went digging through the worst of humanity instead of what Erskine and my dad did, which was select from the best.  It’s pretty much the _exact_ opposite.  A crazy sociopath compared to, well, Captain America.  The paragon of virtue and integrity and selflessness and all that jazz.”

“I’m right here, you know,” Steve muttered weakly.

“Think about it, Steve,” Tony went on undeterred, turning to face his friend.  “If you could take everything that could go wrong with the _man_ behind the serum and stick it all into one guy, you’d get this.  Violent.  Crazy.  Hideous.  Inhuman.  Not to mention this thing’s ability to basically to steal a person’s life.  He’s a monster in every sense of the word.  Kinda like the Red Skull, but maybe worse in some ways, because at least the Red Skull had some restraint.  Or so I read, anyway.”

“What’s your point, Stark?” Sam asked, not seeing where he was going with this.

Tony sighed.  “I don’t have one, really, except that this asshole and Captain America seem like complete polar opposites.  Two sides of the same coin.  You know, your antithesis.  For crying out loud, your biochemical energy is _poisonous_ to him.  I don’t know if there’s such a thing as a soul or a spirit or life force or _whatever_ , but that’s gotta mean something.  Good versus evil.”

Steve’s eyes glazed.  “The alpha and the omega.”

“Yeah, that.”  Tony stopped.  “Wait.  What?”

“That’s what he said to me when he tried to feed off me.”  Steve’s mind was clearly racing, the distant look in his eyes troubled by worrisome thoughts and realizations.  “That was what was written at the entrance to a Red Room archive in Moscow, too.  I saw Rossovich’s name there.  The alpha and the omega.”

Sam knew the verse from the Bible.  And he remembered seeing the word “alpha” attached to all of Steve’s blood samples in Zürich.  “The beginning and the end.”  Tony was right.  Maybe this was clichéd, but it sure seemed like this was a literal battle between… “The first super soldier and the last.  The last of all the Red Room and HYDRA’s attempts.”

They were quiet for a moment, digesting this, whatever it meant.  Sam didn’t know.  He didn’t feel any better about Omega Red or this situation.  “Where does this leave us?” he eventually asked.

“Dunno,” Tony said with an exhausted sigh.  He rubbed the heels of his palms into his eyes.  “Nowhere.”

“I don’t understand.  Why would they think I could feed Omega Red or that the baby – _babies_ – could fix this if they knew my blood wasn’t working?” Steve asked.

“Who knows,” Tony responded.

“Maybe whatever derivative they managed to extract from your blood was flawed,” Bruce offered, eyes glazed with thought.  “It seems likely.  The serum can’t simply be extracted.  Or maybe, like Romanoff said, they thought the combination of Erskine’s serum and the Red Room serum would succeed where whatever they had of your serum failed, that nature had already achieved the step they could never manage: marrying the two serums together on a genetic level.”

“Or maybe they’re a bunch of evil assholes and wondering why is pointless,” Sam shortly said.  He looked at Steve.  “SHIELD.  HYDRA.  The Red Room.  It’s all the same.  And I don’t know much about any of this stuff, but Omega Red looked pretty obsessed with finding Natasha.  If he’s as addicted to killing people as we think he is, why won’t matter.  He’s convinced she’s the answer.  He’ll come for her.”

“He is right.”  Thor’s voice drew their attention as he entered the lab through the doors behind him.  The demigod looked weary but frustrated most of all.  “I have seen creatures driven by bloodlust before.  He will not stop.  Someone must protect her and the baby at all times.”

“Babies,” Tony corrected.  “Get with the program.”

Thor turned his wide, surprised gaze to Steve, and he smiled sincerely with understanding.  He grasped Steve on the uninjured shoulder fondly, joy in his eyes.  “Truly you have been blessed, my friend.  And I swear on my honor that I will do everything in my power to ensure the safety of both Natasha and the children.”

Steve winced, clearly displeased with that.  “If someone needs to protect her, it should be me.”

“Yeah, how about no,” Tony said.  His voice was taut, not quite with anger but bordering on it.  “First of all, you’re supposed to be our leader.  We need you to lead.  And, second, Omega Red may not be able to drain you without hurting himself, but those tentacle things of his can damage you, and you can’t just heal from it.  So no.”

Sam didn’t like Tony’s tone, even if he had some valid points.  The urge to defend Steve reared up before he could stifle it.  “Ease off, Stark.  He–”

“No, Tony’s right,” Steve said.  He released a slow breath and straightened his stature.  For the first time since the STRIKE Team had taken Steve as their prisoner, he saw Captain America again, climbing out of the darkness that had taken root in his heart.  Confidence and cool, tactical know-how and strength.  “I need to be out in the field.”

As much as Sam was relieved, he didn’t want Steve to push himself too far, too fast.  Of course the HYDRA threat needed to be stopped, but if Thor and the Hulk could handle Omega Red, surely Iron Man (and Sam himself) could handle the rest.  Finding Natasha and discovering she was pregnant had certainly given Steve something worth fighting for, something to bring him back out of himself and restore his lost spirit.  And maybe Tony’s nonsense about good and evil, about Omega Red being Steve’s opposite, was driving him back into the fray.  Still, the amount of trauma and damage done to him was substantial.  Sam had seen men break down and never recover from less.  “Steve,” Sam began, “you don’t need to do anything.  You’ve been through enough.”

Steve gave a tight smile.  “I’ve been fighting HYDRA for… seventy years, I guess.  More or less.  Haven’t let them beat me so far.”

Tony looked positively thrilled, clasping Steve on the shoulder and giving him a firm squeeze.  Thor as well came closer, like he was physically closing ranks.  Bruce folded his arms over his chest, his expression determined as though he was waiting for Steve’s orders.  And Sam sighed, gathering himself.  Steve could do this.  They all could do this.  “So what’s the plan then?”

Steve glanced over the data on the display.  “What does JARVIS have on Wenham?”

Before Tony could answer, an alarm wailed.  Nobody moved for a second.  “What is that?” Sam asked, looking around wildly for the source of the blaring noise.

“Doctor Banner, Agent Barton is in cardiac arrest!” JARVIS cried.

Everyone was still.  Then Bruce pushed through their group, sprinting ahead across the lab and down the short corridor to Clint’s room.  Sam could hardly breathe as he followed Steve, Thor, and Tony.  They burst inside the room to hear the alarms were louder, originating from the monitors connected to Clint.  “Oh, God,” Tony moaned, paling.  The screens were red and frantically flashing, revealing a collapsing pulse rate and falling blood pressure and ventricular fibrillation.  Clint’s heart wasn’t pumping effectively.  In a matter of minutes, he could be dead.  “Shit.”

Sharon was at Clint’s side, watching with wide, horrified eyes.  “Doctor Banner, he–”

Bruce was calm, but there was panic simmering under the surface of his composure.  Still, he didn’t falter, reaching for the controls to Clint’s bed and lowering the other man flat.  “I know. Sharon, find some epinephrine.  Tony, where–”

“I got it,” Tony replied, bodily pushing Thor out of the way to get to some cabinets on the other side of the room.  His hands were shaking as he dumped the contents of one drawer to Sharon’s abandoned chair.  Wrapped, pre-loaded syringes fell everywhere.  He fished around in a frenzy until he found a couple.  “Here.”

“Crash cart?”

“One room over!” Tony returned.

Steve was already running, charging back into the hallway.  Sam stepped closer to the bed, staring at Clint’s body in horror.  The alarms were screaming.  “You know CPR, Wilson?” Tony demanded.  He was ripping the sterile wrappers off a syringe, and once it was free, he uncapped it and jabbed it into Clint’s IV port.  Sam nodded, shocked into something of a stupor.  “Then do it.”

Bruce was yanking the blankets away.  Sharon handed him a scissors, and he cut Clint’s hospital gown clear away.  There were bandages underneath, and a great deal of bruising.  So much of the well-defined muscles of Clint’s arms and chest were withered, having atrophied at an alarming rate, and with his white skin bare to the air, the damage was frighteningly obvious.  Sam shoved his trepidation away, gathering up concentration drilled into him from his training and the numerous life and death situations through which he’d survived in the past.  He swallowed the pounding of his own heart, moved right up to the side of the hospital bed, and balled his hands together.  He pressed them down over Clint’s sternum and started compressions, pushing his weight down on his locked elbows and wrists.  He counted in his head, a steady _one two three four five_ , and then started over again.  Clint’s skin was so cold under his.  Cold and dead.

“What is happening?” Thor asked.

“His heart’s not maintaining a normal rhythm,” Bruce explained.  “We need to restore that before it’s too late.”  His face darkened as he looked over the monitors again.  “With all the damage he’s sustained, I don’t know if it’s possible.  And it probably won’t matter in the long run.”

Sharon flinched.  Sam counted and tried not to pay attention.  Tony was acidic.  “Don’t start with your pessimistic bullshit, Banner,” he snapped.

“I’m only being practical!” Bruce said, a touch hurt, a touch more defensive, and a lot angry.  Sam had never heard Bruce raise his voice before.  The stress of all of this had obviously worn him, even though he’d done a remarkable job hiding it.  And that was terrifying all on its own.  “He’s dying!  This was only a matter of time.  We should consider–”

“No,” Tony reflexively snapped, but in the back of his mind, Sam couldn’t help but wonder if Banner didn’t have a point.  Maybe letting Clint go peacefully would be the lesser evil.  Sam kept pushing on his unmoving chest, unbreathing (not without the ventilator forcing him to), still and icy.  He didn’t like to acknowledge worst case scenarios, but honestly, this one was sadly undeniable.  Clint had been fading for days now, slowly, wasting away before their very eyes.  This moment had been inevitable.  It didn’t matter what they did, how hard they fought.  It would only prolong the agony, because there was no way to bring him back.  No way to breathe life back into his body.  Omega Red had taken it all save for this one small shred, a spark that wasn’t enough to sustain him.  For whatever reason, that monster hadn’t killed him, had left him to suffer and die like this…  And even if they could somehow bring him out of this, save him, there was permanent damage.  They couldn’t erase what this had done to his organs, to his body, to his heart and brain.  The disease of Omega Red’s hunger.  That darkness.  _Permanent damage._

 _One two three four five._   Sam tasted salty sweat and bitter desperation.  He pushed hard and fast.  Steady, even as his head spun and his heart shuddered.  _Come on, Barton.  Don’t you die on us!_

Steve was back with the cart.  Tony immediately ran to his side, helping him get it close to the bed.  The inventor’s hands were fast and capable as they switched on the defibrillator and manipulated the controls.  “Bruce,” he said breathlessly.

Bruce grabbed the outstretched paddles.  “Sam, get clear.”  Sam pulled his hands away as Tony squirted gel onto Clint’s chest.  Bruce pressed the paddles there and shocked him.  Clint’s body jerked helplessly under the current before settling back onto the bed.  Everyone was watching the monitors.  “He’s still v-fib,” Bruce announced unhappily.  “Sharon, another shot.”

Sam resumed compressing, counting, hoping, praying.  He looked up at the monitors.  He wasn’t an expert in medicine, but he knew those depressed, unsteady numbers and the halting EKG lines were a really bad sign.  “Christ, we’re losing him…”

“Sam!”

Sam pulled away as Bruce pressed the recharged paddles back to Clint’s chest.  The dull thud resounded like thunder, and Clint’s body slightly jerked again.  Sam glanced behind at the others, Steve with an arm around Sharon’s shoulders. Thor watched with frustrated helplessness clear in his eyes.  “Keep trying,” he beseeched.  “We must save him!”

They kept trying.  Minutes crept away, minutes that seemed infinitely long because they were filled with struggling, with more counting and more praying and a firm refusal to admit that there was maybe nothing they could do.  Bruce kept shocking him, turning the machine higher and higher, but nothing they did restored a stable heartbeat.  Nothing was doing any good.  Nothing was helping.

Bruce gave a short, angry breath as the wail of the monitors changed from insistent alarms demanding action to a shrill, monotonous tone declaring defeated.  Sam blinked the sweat from his eyes.  _Oh, God._   “He’s flatlining,” Bruce said, his tone tight and pinched with misery.

“What does that mean?” Thor demanded.

“He’s dead.”  But Bruce didn’t stop, not even with the steady lines rolling across the monitors, not even with the finality of that statement.  He charged the defibrillator higher.

“That won’t do any good,” Tony said hoarsely.  The role reversal was striking.  “Can’t shock a stable rhythm from–”

“I know!” Bruce roared, and Sam nearly recoiled.  He yanked his hands away.  Clint’s body lurched under the assault of the paddles.  Again, there was nothing.  Nothing but the moan of the monitors and a barrage of halting, strained breaths for everyone in the room.  Nearly seven minutes had passed since Clint had gone into cardiac arrest.  Seven minutes.  Long enough to cause brain death.

Natasha’s groggy voice suddenly cut over the harsh, unbreakable silence.  “What’s–”

“Steve, get her out of here!” Tony snapped angrily, shifting his position to block Romanoff’s view of what was happening.  “She shouldn’t see this!”

The flurry of words, of Steve’s soft pleas and Natasha’s terrified, angry questions and Thor’s attempt to remind her that stress would do her ill… 

“Sam, another round.  Come on.”

“Doctor Banner…”

“Come on!”

Sam couldn’t focus.  He was dizzy, exhausted.  But he went back to it, summoning strength and courage from _somewhere_ and resuming CPR.  He felt the eyes of the Avengers on him, watching, waiting.  Imploring.  Steve’s and Thor’s.  Tony’s.  Sharon’s.  _Natasha’s_.  Sam could practically feel her terror, her rage.  But terror and rage couldn’t do anything to change this.

He pulled his hands away sometime later.  He couldn’t really say how much time.  Seconds.  Minutes.  Hours.  It didn’t matter.  The unspoken realization went through the room, harsh in all of their hearts, and Sam backed lifelessly away from the bed.  Some part of him knew he was next to Sharon, and he reached for her hand.  She took his fingers, hers icy cold and clammy.

Bruce threw the paddles down in frustration.  The sound of them hitting the cart was deafening in the silence, and most of the room’s occupants flinched.  He stood there, breathing heavily, shoulders hunched and every line of his body tense.  The anger radiating off of him was palpable, dark and vicious, but with one touch of Tony’s comforting hand to his shoulder, he relaxed, came back from the terrifying brink.  He sagged, pulling away without any heat or hurry, and walked out of the room.

Nobody moved.  Or spoke.  Or breathed.  Natasha was wrapped up in Steve’s arms, staring with wide, unbelieving eyes.  Steve’s eyes were closed as he tightened his grip on Natasha, pain fracturing his face.  Sharon’s cheeks were wet.  She leaned brokenly into Sam and Sam absently slid an arm around her, unable to catch his breath.  Tony heaved a shuddering sigh.  He switched off the ventilator and the moaning monitors.  Then he brokenly followed Bruce.

It was Thor who finally found the strength to pick a sheet up off the floor and cover the body.

* * *

Clint was dead.

Dead.

_Gone._

It was so completely unexpected.  And it seemed like it was impossible, like it hadn’t happened at all, but it had.  It was surreal, devastating, and they should have been more prepared, should have _seen_ it coming, because it had been building for days.  Suddenly everything in which they’d been caught, HYDRA’s plot and the history of the Red Room and the virus in the Tower and the babies…  None of that mattered.  It didn’t matter that the team was back, that Captain America was there to lead them, that Black Widow was safe and everyone was ready to defend the world.  _Nothing_ mattered now.

The Tower was silent.  Absolutely silent.  No one dared to speak.  They hardly even moved.  Time had slowed to a lethargic crawl, so grotesquely stretched that a minute became forever.  Thirty of them was unimaginable, but that was what had somehow passed.  Thirty minutes.  A half an hour.  Out in the lab, Tony, Bruce, and Maria sat, listless and lost.  Sharon was gone, having left without a word.  Thor stared out the windows over the city, eyes dark with pain and regret.  Only JARVIS soldiered on, and that was likely because he had no choice.  The analysis of Wenham’s contacts and associates was still running.  Nobody seemed to care or even notice. 

Sam walked in a daze from the lab back down the short corridor to the hospital rooms.  His feet were heavy, his heart heavier, pumping in a slow, pained rhythm against his sternum.  He still felt sick and dizzy, like this was some sort of nightmare from which he couldn’t escape, but it wasn’t.  He couldn’t just wake up and find it hadn’t happened.  This was only one horror in such a long string of them, one after another after another, and he was numb, like his mind had blessedly checked out.  He let it go.

Steve was there outside Clint’s room, arms crossed over his chest and leaning against the doorframe.  The door itself was partially shut, but Sam realized he could still see inside as he got closer.  All of the equipment was silent and dark.  Long afternoon shadows stretched across the silent room.  The sunlight still seeping through the blinds bathed the floor tiles in a sickly bright glow.  No one cleaned the mess.  Syringes, used and still wrapped, lay all over the floor.  The crash cart was where Bruce had left it.  Pillows and blankets were strewn.  It was as if time had stopped the second Clint had died. 

Natasha was sitting by Clint’s bed, stiff.  Unyielding.  Her face was hidden, even with her hair pulled back into a messy ponytail.  She was staring at the sheet covering Barton’s body.  Staring.  Barely breathing.  Sam couldn’t see if she was crying.  “She okay?” he softly asked Steve.

Steve didn’t move.  He, too, was rigid with pain.  It probably hurt to cross his arms as he was, but he was making no effort to shift his position.  “I don’t know,” he admitted in a quiet voice.  “She doesn’t want me in there.”

“Are you okay?”

Steve gave a feeble smile that pretty quickly collapsed into a frown.  He looked down at his sneakers.  “No, not really.”

Sam sighed.  “Me neither.”

“He was a good man,” Steve said.  He sniffed and swallowed thickly.  With Steve’s head bowed, Sam couldn’t see if his eyes were wet, but his voice was thick and throaty.  “I know he did some bad things.  Made bad choices.  But when it mattered, he always came through.  And he brought Nat out of that hell he found her in, gave her a second chance…”  He sniffed again, shaking his head.  “It’s not right.”

“I know.”  And Sam did.  Maybe he hadn’t known Barton all that well, but he knew Steve was right.  Clint had been a good man, a decent guy, who’d done his best to make up for a past full of crimes and immoral actions and poor judgment.  He’d joined SHIELD to go straight.  He’d become an Avenger to protect the world.  He had.  He laid more than his life down on the line to save Steve from Pierce and the STRIKE Team and to bring those targeting blades out of the Triskelion.  He’d offered up his soul.  And silently and without aid he’d born the scars of that, the burden of his guilt and the weight of everyone else’s blame.  Every moment Sam had spent doubting Clint, hating him for not finding another way…  They were poison to his soul.  Clint had been a hero.  He had been a _hero_.

It wasn’t fucking _fair_.

Steve shuddered again.  Sam grabbed his shoulder, trying to offer up some comfort.  “He didn’t deserve this,” Steve whispered.  “God, HYDRA has taken so much from me, from us…  I can’t stand to lose another friend.  Not like this.”  His words were getting rougher.  “And Nat…  She had something with him I don’t think I’ll ever understand.  Now she’s lost that, now when…  I promised her I’d find a way to fix this.  I thought I could.  Apparently all of this has turned me into a hell of a liar.”  Steve’s lips curled in a pathetically sorrowful grin as he finally met Sam’s gaze.  The grin slipped hard and fast.  “He died to protect _them_.”

Sam could practically hear the _it’s my fault_ begging to be released from Steve’s mouth.  He didn’t want to hear it.  “Don’t.  This isn’t what we need from you right now.  This isn’t what she needs.  There’ll be time for all of this later.  Right now we need to keep our heads in the game.”  He thought of Bruce’s barely restrained anger and Tony’s lost expression and Hill’s feeble attempts to hang onto her stoicism.  He thought of Thor’s silent sorrow and Sharon, running because the reality was too terrible.  He _saw_ Natasha, clinging to Clint’s lifeless hand.  “I know I said before that you don’t need to do this, that you’ve been thought enough…  And you have.  But right now we need a leader.”

Steve was fiercely wavering.  Sam wondered if he wasn’t making a mistake pressing him like this.  “You know, when I lost Buck…  I had to pick myself back up because there was no time to cry.  One night was all I had.  Peggy was there, and she…”  He shook his head, like he wanted to clear the memory.  “There’s never time to cry.  Picked myself back up.  Died two days later.  And for nothing, apparently.  Seventy years later the world’s as vulnerable as it ever was.  And HYDRA is still taking things from me.”

Sam shook his head.  This wasn’t the time to fall apart.  “Steve…”

Steve’s glare was distant but hard, his eyes focused on nothing but filled with rage and pain.  “They are not taking _one more thing_ from me.  Not another friend.  Not Natasha.  Not the babies.  _Nothing._ ”

Sam exhaled slowly.  He grabbed Steve’s shoulder again in agreement and understanding.  “We’re with you.  Whatever you need.  You won’t do this alone.”  Steve looked at him, maybe a little surprised about something, but genuinely relieved.

“Captain.”

The two men turned to see Hill behind them.  She’d arrived just a few minutes ago from a meeting in DC to which she’d rushed yesterday.  The news had struck her deeply, though she was trying adamantly to hide it.  Her impassive mask was cracking in the way she looked at Steve, looked at him for _guidance_ of all things.  It made sense.  Whatever else he’d been, Nick Fury had led these SHIELD agents in their quest to build a safer, better world.  Without him, they were rudderless.  And Sam was more certain than ever that they all needed Captain America right now.

Hill folded her arms across her chest.  “Stark’s found something.  A warehouse south of Teterboro, New Jersey.  One of Wenham’s brother-in-laws is part-owner of a shipping and distribution company.”  Shipping and distribution.  That sounded like he had access to a pier and the means to transport goods en masse.  And that also sounded like the best lead they’d had in days.

Steve released a slow breath, standing straighter and dropping his arms.  “Intel?”

Hill shook her head.  “Everything looks above the board.  They deal in antiques, as well as acting as a middle man for storing and processing shipments for other companies.”  She shrugged half-heartedly.  “It’s all we have.”

Steve gazed at Natasha, his eyes distant once more.  Sam watched him expectantly, waiting for whatever was going to come.  He didn’t know whether to be relieved or worried when Steve set his jaw the way he used to.  The way Captain America did.  “Have everyone gear up,” he said to Hill.  “Thor offered to stay with Natasha, and I think that’s a good idea.  He can protect her in case Omega Red attacks while the Tower is empty.  And we need Bruce with us if there’s any sort of poison involved.”

“Right.”

Steve stepped inside.  Natasha didn’t turn right away, staring still at Clint’s body.  The tension was as thick as the silence.  He walked slowly, like he was approaching a dangerous animal who could (and would) attack at any moment.  Sam could see he wasn’t really afraid, his hesitation borne more from concern.  “Nat,” he called.

She finally turned.  Her eyes were watery, red, but her cheeks were dry, like she was holding _everything in_.  She stared at Steve, narrowing her gaze, and Sam found he couldn’t read her at all.  Was she going to come apart?  Was she going to bow under her grief, demand that Steve stay with her?

No.  She was Black Widow.  “Go,” she said.  “Go and avenge him.”

Steve crossed the rest of the way quickly.  He was at her side, pulling her gently but forcefully up from her chair.  Sam averted his gaze as he kissed her; this wasn’t his place at all.  But he couldn’t help but hear Steve’s soft, rushed words.  “If he comes for you, you run and you hide.”

“I want to fight.”  Of course she did.  _She was Black Widow._

“You run and you hide.  Do you understand me?”  This wasn’t Steve Rogers asking.  This was Captain America ordering.  Sam had never heard Steve speak this way to Natasha before.  He’d always treated her with absolute respect, like she was his exact equal and every bit as capable and powerful as he was.  This was raw and driven by panic and fear.  He was staring her down, unwavering.  “If he hurts you…”  Everything he didn’t say was clear.  _If he hurts you, Clint died for nothing.  If he hurts you, they win._

_I can’t lose you.  Run._

Natasha looked enraged, and for a brief moment, Sam thought she would fight him about this.  She didn’t, however.  Frustrated, furious tears spilled freely from her eyes now.  She grabbed Steve about the neck and yanked his face to hers for another deeper kiss that Sam definitely was not going to watch.  “Avenge him,” she said again.

Steve nodded.  He pulled away quickly, shaking for his first step or two, but he had stopped by the time he reached Sam at the door.  “Let’s go,” he said.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, the Avengers (or what was left of them) set down in a Stark Industries helicopter outside of Teterboro.  Tony powered down the chopper once they were on the ground, flipping switches quickly as he shut it off.  Steve was busy loading guns under his jacket, a couple of Glocks and extra rounds.  He handed another two to Sam.  Sam took them and holstered them on his belt.  He hesitated a moment before grabbing a rifle.  There was a possibility that this was all a mistake; so much of what had led them to this place was conjecture.  Wenham’s involvement was based on Steve’s memory of his voice (though Sam had to agree that the American in Prague did sound a lot like the senator).  And Wenham’s connection to this warehouse was superfluous, almost like a friend of a friend.  Barely even family.  It could be they were illegally wandering onto private property during business hours, hunting down bad men and evil plots that were simply not there.  And they were doing this heavily armed no less.  But he cast aside his doubt and hesitation, because every other instance their suppositions about HYDRA’s plots had been correct, and this time wasn’t likely to be different.

Steve loaded another handgun and offered it to Banner, who was unstrapping from his seat along the wall of the chopper.  Bruce stared at it like he didn’t recognize it.  “Take it, Doctor Banner,” Steve said.  Bruce still didn’t, glancing between Steve and the weapon.  Steve gave a small, disarming smile.  “It would probably be best if we kept the Hulk contained unless we really need him.  For now, at least.  If there is some sort of poison in there, we’ll need you to tell us what to do.”  Him and not the beast.  Bruce sighed, not entirely pleased or comfortable with that.  Still, he took the gun.

Tony appeared with a small case in his hand.  Sam knew what it was.  He went to the door of the fuselage.  “Ready?”

“Ready,” Steve agreed.  Tony pressed the button to open the hatch and lower the steps.  Their small group exited and found themselves in a field maybe half a mile from the warehouse.  The grasses were long, golden in the dying daylight that was meagerly poking through silver and lavender rain clouds.  They rustled and rolled like waves when the cold breeze brushed over them.  The four of them walked silently toward the fence surrounding the warehouse, trying to avoid ruts and holes where they could.  The ground was loose and muddy with recent rain, sucking in shoes and boots, and they struggled a little.  They didn’t look much like the Avengers actually, with dirt on their feet and splattering up their pant legs.  Stark wasn’t wearing his armor.  Steve didn’t have his uniform or his shield.  And Sam’s wings were still clipped; there hadn’t been time, with all of this craziness and trauma, for Tony to make good on his promise to finish his new suit.  They appeared as normal men, and if it hadn’t been for the rifle slung over Sam’s shoulder and the fact they were essentially trespassing onto private property, no one would have mistaken them for Earth’s mightiest heroes.

Sam wasn’t even sure they could be now.  Everything felt hanging by a thread, Clint’s loss silently coloring every thought, every word, every moment.  Clint’s loss and everything that had happened and everything that could still happen.  Sam felt weak, low, _struggling_ to seem calm and in control with a storm threatening, and he knew the others were the same.  He glanced at Steve often while they walked, not caring at all if Tony or Bruce noticed.  He was fairly certain they were doing the same at any rate.  But Steve didn’t seem to care.  His expression was determined, eyes blank, his jaw clenched in such a way that suggested he was grinding his teeth.  That darkness Sam had seen before in him in that lab in Zürich, like a wound cut too deeply and bleeding so badly, like a man _pushed too far,_ was there again.  Right beneath the surface.  Sam was more worried than ever.

They reached the fence.  “Now what?” Bruce asked, staring up at the ten-foot-high impediment.  It would have been climbable, if not for the barbed wire coils at the top.  That sort of thing didn’t speak toward this place having nothing to hide.

Steve shook the chain links to see how strong and sturdy they were.  “I can throw you guys over.”

Banner looked decidedly displeased with that.  “Fun,” he grumbled.

“As much as that sounds smashing, I have a better, less bone-breaking alternative,” Tony declared.  Even his usual acerbic wit was tempered and lifeless.  He set his case down and flexed his right arm.  From the case, one of Iron Man’s gauntlets emerged and flew onto his arm and hand.  He fired the repulsor in a fairly thin, confined beam, and cut a door in the fence.

When he was done, Steve grabbed the loosed section and tossed it down into the grass.  The Avengers went inside the warehouse grounds.  There was a huge section ahead filled with loading doors to transport freight, some with idle semi-trailers backed up to them.  It was completely still aside from the cold wind.  Sam didn’t like this.  The closer they got, the more certain he became that this was _exactly_ what they feared it was.  “Where is everyone?” he asked.

It was somewhat rhetorical, but Tony answered anyway.  “Knowing HYDRA on what could be the eve of their master plan, I bet they’re inside having some sort of ‘heil, mein Führer’ party,” he muttered.  They reached the loading dock.  “We busting in?”

Steve didn’t seem pleased with that, but he still hopped up the four feet from the ground to the cement platform of one of the docks.  He smoothly jumped over the metal railing and reached for the door of the dock.  It was locked.  Steve looked around like he was waiting to be discovered.  It was silent and they were still alone, so he wrapped his fingers around the handle for the door and pulled up hard enough to break the lock.

Sam expected Stark to make some comment about commemorating this day as the day Captain America sunk so low as to unabashedly engage in breaking and entering, but he was silent as he climbed up onto the dock less gracefully than Steve had.  Bruce followed, grabbing Tony’s outstretched hand for help.  Sam went last.  Steve tentatively ventured inside, eyes sweeping the huge room beyond.  It was empty.  There was not even a box, let alone a person.  The four of them stood fairly dumbfounded, and that unpleasant sensation of making a really bad mistake was settling like iron in the pit of Sam’s stomach.  “This isn’t what I’d call a party,” he softly said.

“What the hell?” Tony asked.  It wasn’t even five o’clock on a weekday.  One would think this place should have been brimming, both with inventory and people moving, packing, sorting, and loading it.

“Something’s not right,” Bruce declared.

“You think?” Tony returned.  “Where’s this Red Army?  Where’s the poison?”

“Not here,” Steve answered.  From the outside, it had seemed like this place was comprised of at least a few large sections.  Across the cement floor on the other side of the vacuous space, there was a set of double doors.  Steve jogged over to them, crossing the open space quickly to limit exposure.  Windows lined the top of the room, and though it seemed unlikely anyone could be looking in, it still wasn’t a risk worth taking.  He glanced through the glass panes set into the doors, scoping out whatever lay beyond them.  Then he nodded at them.

Sam moved fast, military training guiding him.  He sank into it, covering Stark and Banner as they ran across to Steve.  Once they were together, Steve pushed open the doors revealing a long hallway beyond with gray carpeting and white ceiling tiles.  They proceeded down it, passing a few offices, all of them oddly empty.  No desks or other furniture.  No computers, no supplies, and no files.  And still no people.  One of the offices was very clearly labeled “SECURITY” on a plaque adjacent to the door.  It wasn’t locked.  Steve flanked one side of the door, Sam the other, each with a hand on a gun.  Steve knocked.  No one answered.  A nod was shared between the soldiers, and Steve opened the door.

No one.  But this room at least had a desk and a computer.

Tony pushed his way through the rest of them to the workstation.  The computer looked a tad outdated, maybe a few years old.  “Quaint,” Stark remarked, sitting in the desk chair.  He turned the monitor on and started tapping away on the keyboard.  A moment later a smug grin overtook his face.  “And not well encrypted.”

“Can you get in?” Steve asked, leaning over Tony’s shoulder.

“Already done.”  Tony’s gaze narrowed as he looked over the contents of the computer.  “There are tons of files here.  It’s going to take time to look through all of this.”

They didn’t exactly have time.  “What about that?” Sam asked, pointing to an application on the desktop.  Tony launched it, and suddenly they were watching nearly a dozen pictures.  Sam couldn’t make sense of what it was at first, but he saw a gray image that was very clearly the open loading dock through which they’d just entered.  There was a number in the lower left corner that was counting up.  A date and time stamp.  These were security feeds from around the complex.  Corridors.  The front lobby.  The loading dock.  Other sections of the building.

Tony scrolled through them quickly, moving through image after image.  “The whole damn place looks completely empty.”

Sam’s mind went straight back to Prague.  “The last time we were in an empty building like this, everyone–”  Tony found a video of another warehouse, positively teeming with soldiers.  “–was gathered for some kind of meeting.”

“God, I hate being right all the time,” Tony muttered.

Any doubts as to this being HYDRA’s base of operations in the US died pretty quickly.  There was no audio on the feed, of course, and this camera looked to be situated in the upper right-hand corner of the room so the view wasn’t great.  It was decent enough, however, to see the sheer number of soldiers gathered, most of which were armed and cheering.  Equally disturbing as the number of men (at least a hundred, if not more) was the lack of any cargo.  “Maybe they shipped the poison somewhere else,” Bruce murmured, shaking his head and looking at Sam.

“And that’s hardly what I call an army,” Tony added.  “Looks like the guys you saw in Moscow, Cap.”

Steve didn’t answer.  He leaned closer over Tony’s shoulder, eyes narrowed, obviously studying something in the grainy image.  “Tony, can you rotate the camera?  Zoom in a little?”

“Uh…  Sure.”  Tony clicked a few controls with the mouse and the video feed enlarged.

“In the back of the room there.  You see that?” Steve asked.

“Yeah.”

The image continued to shift, grow, and refocus on a figure that stood on a platform of a large forklift.  Sam squinted, unable to make him out at first.  He wore a black uniform, a military cut but not of any nation that he recognized.  The man’s face was round, his head without hair.  And it was dark, not African or another dark-skinned ethnicity, but…  “What’s with him?”

Steve was staring like he’d seen a ghost.  “It can’t be,” he murmured.

“What?” Tony asked, exasperated.

“Who is it?” Bruce asked.

Sam looked closer, trying to see the man’s face more clearly.  His features looked familiar, though not familiar enough that he could really place them.  It was just a vague impression he’d seen this guy before, not enough to be causing Steve’s pallor and wide ( _horrified_ ) eyes.  And his features didn’t really match his skin tone, which made Sam wonder if that was unnatural, which inexplicably took his mind to a bunker outside Wheaton, New Jersey where a dead mad scientist programmed into a computer had shown him image after image of HYDRA’s reign of terror, starting back in World War II when Captain America had fought the…  “Holy shit.  It’s the Red Skull.”

 _“What?”_ Tony gasped.  He spun in his chair, twirling to appraise Steve.  “I thought you said he died in 1945!  The Tesseract killed him!”

Steve said nothing.  That slightly maniacal glint was back to his eyes.  He was reading the camera ID off the video feed and corresponding it with numbers on a map of camera locations.  Then he was turning, storming out of the room with a gun drawn.  “Damn it, Cap!”  Tony jumped out of his chair, grabbing his case, and ran after Steve.

“Not good,” Bruce muttered, face pale and eyes wide with worry.  That felt to Sam to be a tremendous understatement, and he took the rifle from his shoulder and followed his teammates back into the hallway.  Steve was thundering ahead, and Sam lurched to catch up, pushing through another set of doors.  This was reckless and stupid; just because this place _looked_ empty because everyone was gathered in that warehouse didn’t mean it was.  But he had a feeling there was no stopping Steve now.  This had been personal before – nothing _but_ personal – but now it was even more so.  Steve found the warehouse.  Muffled shouts and noise filtered into the hallway through the sealed doors in front of them.  There were narrow stairs to the left that led to its second level.  He was bounding up them quickly, silently, and they led to a control room of sorts.  It was small, overly stuffed with binders loaded with papers and files.  A console stretched the far window, and it contained the controls for the few gantry cranes that ran the length of the huge space beyond.

Steve ducked low so that he wouldn’t be seen and motioned the others to do the same.  Now the noise was nearly deafening.  “Tonight will be the night America falls to its knees before us!  Tonight will be the night they learn the might of our power!  Tonight will be–”

“Why do the bad guys always have such a hard-on for their own bullshit,” Tony seethed.

Sam looked up over the console, glancing at the man on the forklift.  Sure enough, his face and head were blood red.  He snapped back down in disgust, clenching his rifle tighter.  “What are your orders, Cap?”

Steve was rigid.  “Tony, you and I are gonna take them all down.  We’ll capture the Red Skull.  And then make him talk.”

“Payback time?” Stark darkly asked.  Steve didn’t answer beyond a tense glance, but that was confirmation in and of itself.  “I’m all for that.”

“Sam, cover us.  And Bruce, don’t engage unless it seems like we’re in trouble.  You’re our ace in the hole.  Plus, like I said before–”

“Right.  Poison.”  Bruce sighed.  “I gotta say, Steve, I don’t like this.”

“Noted.”  With that, Steve went back to the door, Tony right behind him, case in hand.  Sam shared a concerned look with Bruce.  At least from this vantage he had an impressive view of the Red Skull pontificating and the bastards below cheering him.  With the rifle, he could probably kill the guy from this range; he’d never know what hit him.  But he didn’t.  Those weren’t his orders.

A moment later, Red Skull raised his hands to quiet the crowd.  “We will spread anarchy over our enemies, anarchy and chaos as thick as blood, and they will drown in it.  From their collapse, our Red Army will rise, more powerful than anyone can fathom.  One after one, governments will fall until there are no nations, no flags, nothing beyond our glorious destiny.  Every man united in madness.”  This guy didn’t sound German.  And though it was hard to tell with all of the shouting, the guttural voice was familiar, like his face.  “Those who have led us in the past were mistaken in believing that order and control would avail us.  People fight against oppression, fight to free themselves almost instinctually, but against this wild, untamed aggression we are about to unleash upon them…  They will be helpless!”  The crowd roared.  “Hail, HYDRA!”

_“Hail, HYDRA!  Hail, HYDRA!  Hail–”_

The doors below them burst open.  A breath later, Captain America and Iron Man pushed into the group.  Guns were immediately raised, but the men backed away in shock and alarm.  Tony’s armor glinted crimson and gold in the fluorescent lights overhead.  “Heard your plan,” Iron Man called across the crowd.  “Gotta say I don’t particularly care for it.”

The Red Skull frowned at them, lowering his arms, his alarm at their sudden appearance fading so fast it was like it had never been there at all.  “Stark.  Captain America,” he sneered.  “You’re too late.”

“Where’s the poison?” Steve demanded in a cool tone.  The soldiers continued to back away, their weapons raised but almost fearful.  Steve didn’t even have a weapon drawn.  “If this is your Red Army, you don’t stand a chance.  Not against us or against the US military.”

“You think _this_ is our Red Army?”  A laugh like fetid oil spilled from the Red Skull’s mouth.  “My predecessor may have been wrong about a great many things, but not about this.  You are an arrogant fool.  A simpleton with a shield.”  His gaze turned cruel.  “Not even that anymore.”

“You son of a bitch!” Tony spat.

“You murdered my friend today,” Steve snapped back, his voice rough and faltering.  “You’re not walking away from this.  You’ll pay for what you’ve done.  This ends _here._ ”

“You are right.”  The Red Skull smiled.  “It does.”

“Oh, fuck,” Sam gasped as the men attacked.  Steve and Tony broke apart from each other, Steve’s gun flashing when he fired and Iron Man’s repulsors sizzling as they shot through the crowd.  Steve was moving _fast_ , faster than Sam had ever seen him be.  He was fighting with abandon, practically dodging bullets.  His fist slammed into the face of one soldier, grabbed another by the vest and threw him, and kicked a third, driving him back into the group.  Steve knocked a gun away, using the butt of it to clip a man hard across the face.  A group was opening fire, but Iron Man thudded down in front of Steve, protecting him.  Bullets uselessly clanked against the metal plating.  Still, there were so many men.  The two of them were about to be overrun.

Sam grabbed one of the desk chairs and threw it through the window.  The glass shattered with a bang, and he crawled on top of the control console.  Sighting with the rifle, he opened fire, cutting down as many of the men as he could.  Tony punched one hard enough to send him flying across the room to hit the opposite wall.  They were swarming him, like they could somehow pry the armor off if they just got close enough to him.  Something exploded near Steve, but he jumped clear, and the next grenade he caught and sent back toward its thrower.  “Sam, over there!” Bruce yelled.

Sam whipped to the left, unloading at the slew of men overwhelming Tony.  He cut them down until he ran out of bullets, the magazine running dry.  He reloaded with his second magazine, ducking when someone returned fire.  Bruce winced, covering his head beside him as bullets ripped through the control room around them.  When the volley stopped, Sam stood and fired anew.  He swept wide, thinning the crowd around Steve and Tony until he yet again depleted his ammunition.  Then he swore and tossed the rifle.  There wasn’t much more he could do from up here, and it was practically a warzone down there.  He watched, winced, as Steve was knocked back.  He landed roughly on his side, on his injured shoulder, and that slowed him when he got back up.  But he did, and he sprung out of the way of a knife, snatching another gun from the unsuspecting hands of nearby thug and using it on the group chasing him.  “Bruce,” Sam said worriedly, glancing at the other man.

Bruce was worried, too.  He peered helplessly over the console, still taking cover behind it.  “I know, I know,” he breathed.  “Give them a chance.”

They did.  Sitting up there, doing nothing to help…  It was torturous.  But Steve and Tony were Avengers, and sure enough, the tide quickly began to turn.  The men couldn’t use their weapons effectively, not with Steve’s speed and agility, Tony’s armor, and everyone’s close proximity to each other.  In a matter of seconds, Iron Man was bringing them down by the group, and Steve was working to keep the stragglers off of Tony so he could maintain a heavy, well-aimed deployment of his arsenal of weapons.

“Damn it,” Bruce whispered beside him.  “Sam, he’s running!  The Red Skull!”

Sam ripped his eyes to the back of the room.  Bruce was right.  The bastard was lowering the forklift.  Unless Steve or Tony noticed, he was going to escape.  There was simply no way to alert them, not with the echoing cacophony of gunfire and shouting.  Sam took one look at the gantry crane where it was idle not far from the control room.  The track went straight across the warehouse.  “Bruce!”

“God, you’re as crazy as the rest of them…”

Sam backed up, took a running leap, jumped off the console, and soared toward the crane.  He landed on its arm, scrabbling for a grip.  He found one, getting his hands securely around the chains securing the hook to the hoist above.  It was a serious drop down into the battle below, and he kicked feebly, his arms aching with the strain.  Bruce had already fired the crane up, and a breath later Sam was racing over the slew of fighting men and reaching the other side of the warehouse.  He gritted his teeth, struggling to hold on, bullets flying haphazardly all around them.  His heart was pounding, sweat slicking his hands.  The Red Skull jumped down the remainder of the way to the floor and ran for the doors behind them.  The hoist lowered, slower than the horizontal speed of the crane, so Sam let go to get down there faster.  The impact of his feet to the concrete made his bones ache in misery, but he didn’t spare a second on that, staggering into a sprint.  He reached onto his belt to pull his handgun.

“Stop!” he bellowed, bursting through the still swinging doors.  He ran down another gray and white corridor, sneakers pounding on the carpet.  Ahead there was the flap of black leather as the Red Skull sharply turned a corner.  Sam followed, slamming into the wall hard enough to smash the sheetrock before gathering his balance and continuing after him.  Another set of double doors marked the end of this corridor.  Sam rammed them hard enough to nearly tear them from their hinges.

It was another, much smaller warehouse.  This one was filled to the brim with containers, floor to ceiling.  He couldn’t spare more than a glance, though.  _“Zapustite ikh! Sdelayte eto seychas!”_ the Red Skull bellowed to a young man who sat at a folding desk with a laptop.  The kid floundered, fingers flying over the keyboard.

Sam’s eyes widened, his heart stopping, as he thundered forward.  He pointed the gun at the Red Skull.  “Stop it!  Back away!”  The Red Skull did nothing, stiff and still despite the mad dash to get here.  Sam couldn’t catch his breath, turning the gun onto the kid at the desk.  “Get away from the computer!  Right now!”  The young man was pale, terrified, raising his hands.  He made no move to follow Sam’s orders, though.  “Get up!” Sam shouted in frustration.  _“Now!”_

The kid did quickly, too quickly to see the gun whipped in his direction.  Sam ducked, and that was what probably saved his life.  The bullet aimed for his chest hit the meat of his bicep instead.  He returned fire as he fell, and his shot struck true.  The enemy soldier hit the ground, dead.

Sam scrambled upward, ignoring the awful, burning pain in his left arm.  He returned the gun to the Red Skull.  “Get on your knees,” he gasped.

The man looked hideous.  “As I said, you’re too late.”

“Get on your fucking knees!” Sam shouted.  “Trust me when I tell you that after all the horrible shit you bastards have done to us, blowing you away would feel pretty damn good right now.  So you better listen to me.  On your knees.  Hands up.”

Surprisingly, the man followed his command, sinking down to the floor and raising his hands.  “Killing me doesn’t matter.  You can’t stop what we’ve started.  A fire is going to burn across this country, and you _can’t stop it._ ”

Cold fear washed over Sam at that smug, _confident_ statement.  He could hear the sounds of the battle ending.  The Red Army or whatever that had been in there was probably defeated.  So what were they too late for?  What couldn’t they stop?

What fire?

There was a scuffle behind them.  Sam didn’t lower his gun or turn, hearing Steve calling to him from outside in the hallway.  The distinctive sound of Iron Man’s weapons still firing was distant and muffled.  Stark was probably finishing off the remains of the resistance in the other warehouse.  “Sam?” Steve called.  “Sam!”

“I got him!  In here!”  Bruce and Steve arrived.  “I’m alright,” he said to Steve’s worried glance at his arm.  A quick scan of them revealed they were too, though Steve was a bit harried and winded and Bruce looked more and more agitated.   “That guy was working at this laptop.”

Steve went over to it, but he looked lost.  Sam could see everything on the screen was in Cyrillic, which Steve could fluidly read, but it was clearly a command prompt with some sort of script running.  “We need Tony here,” Steve said.  Bruce nodded and pivoted, running back out of the room and heading towards the sound of the fight with his gun in front of him.  Steve looked around wildly, taking in the tall stacks of cases.  “What is all of this?”  His eyes turned to the Red Skull, narrowed in doubt, anger, and frustration.  And then his gun came out of his holster, and he joined Sam in aiming at their enemy.  “And you’re not Johann Schmidt, so who the hell are you?”

“The new face of HYDRA,” the man responded.

Steve’s brow furrowed with confusion for a moment.  Then it loosened with dawning realization.  “Malik,” he said.

Sam shook his head.  “What?” he gasped in disbelief.  The minute Steve put the name to the face, though, he knew it was right.  The features finally came together, matching the man in Prague.  Never letting his gun waver, he stalked closer, reaching for Malik’s face.  He swiped his hand down the other man’s cheek and it came away red.  “It’s goddamn face paint.”

He was too shocked to even notice at first that Steve wasn’t next to him anymore.  He heard a rattle, turned, and saw Steve pulling one of the huge crates over.  It was dark plastic, thick and heavy.  There was a latch on one side.  Steve easily broke it.  “What…”

“Cap!”

It was Stark.  He burst inside the room, Banner on his tail.  “Tony, look at that laptop,” Steve ordered.  Tony didn’t hesitate, heading over to the desk.  “Bruce, I need your help.”  Bruce crouched beside Steve as he broke open the crate.  Sam couldn’t see what they were doing since they were mostly behind him and to the left.  He backed up slightly, keeping his gun on Malik.

“God,” Banner whispered.  “Steve, careful!  Careful!”

“What?” Sam gasped breathlessly.  “What is it?”  He turned over his shoulder just as Steve pulled a rack of some sort of globes out of the case.  There were dozens and dozens of them, and each one was about the size of a baseball.  There was something inside them.  Something red.  It wasn’t viscous like a liquid.  A ruby gas, thick and cloudy inside the glass.  “What is it?”

“Some sort of aerosolized bioweapon.  We need to call the CDC, get them over here–”

“This is probably a little beyond them,” Tony declared tightly.

Bruce examined the spheres more closely.  “They’re linked together.”  He ran a hand over some sort of apparatus to which the top of each sphere was connected.  He traced the lines inside the rack, to a central venting mechanism buried within the cube of glass balls.  “This is how they’re going to spread the poison.  Through the air.”

“Jesus,” Sam breathed.  “What the hell were they doing with the computer?

Tony shook his head in frustration.  “I’m working on that!”

“Bruce,” Steve said.  “Let it go.  Don’t touch it.”  He rose to his full height, pale and covered in perspiration.  He was shaking and staring at the globes, horror bright in his eyes.  “Get away.  I know what this is.”

Sam’s blood ran cold.  “What?”

The Red Skull smiled from the floor.  “Yes, Captain.  You failed yet again.  When you stopped the Red Guardian, you didn’t stop anything at all.  Cut off one head and two more–”

“Oh, God.  It’s the insanity serum,” Steve whispered.

Malik laughed like a madman.  Sam rushed back to him and jabbed the gun right in his forehead.  “Shut up!  What is it?  What?”

Steve shook his head, eyes wide with dawning understanding.  “The Red Army.  They’re making the Red Army by exposing innocent people to the insanity serum.  They must have some way to flood the city with it.”

_“What?”_

“It’ll be complete anarchy!  They’re going to turn everyone crazy, violent and enraged and…  Oh, my God.”  Steve’s face went white with terror.  He grabbed Bruce’s shoulder and tried to pull him away.  “Bruce, get back!  Everybody get out of here!  _Bruce!”_

Bruce shook his head, unwilling to give up the fight.  He had his hands in the innards of the device.  “I can see how to shut it down.  There’s an easy way to disengage the main pump from the vacuum that draws the gas out–”

“Bruce, you need to back away!  Right now!  _Back away!_ ”

It was too late.  Sam was so engrossed in the panicked situation behind him that he didn’t notice Malik move.  A hand like iron wrapped around his, squeezing painfully tight.  He yelped as he was yanked to the floor, the gun slipping from his fingers.  The Red Skull scooped it up as he brought Sam down.  He whirled, aimed, and fired.

For a horrific moment, Sam thought he’d shot Steve or Bruce.  But he hadn’t.  He hadn’t even tried to hit them.  He’d shot the device, and one of the globes instantly exploded.  A few more were knocked loose by the impact and shattered on the cement floor, sending a plume of poison jetting upward.  _Oh, God_ , Sam thought, heart stopping and lungs seizing and mind screaming one thing over and over again. _Oh, God.  Oh, God!_

A cloud of red completely enveloped Steve and Bruce, and a _breath_ later, the Hulk screamed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Zapustite ikh! Sdelayte eto seychas!_ – Launch them! Do it now!


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE:** This is the beginning of the end. The de facto title of this chapter is "Girl Power". Enjoy :-).

Natasha felt miserably sick.  It wasn’t simply the pregnancy, although that was bad enough.  It was everything.  The shock of carrying twins.  The horror of Omega Red hunting her.  Steve leaving her to go fight HYDRA.  _Clint_.  She couldn’t look at him anymore.  It hadn’t even been an hour since he’d died – _died to save her and her babies_ – and she still couldn’t muster the courage to move.  Maybe it was irrational (it probably was), but walking away now felt akin to running away before: leaving him to a horrible fate.  After everything he’d done for her, done _to_ her, changed her and molded her and helped her become who she was…  He deserved more than this.  More than the pathetic trickle of tears that seemed unending.  Her eyes were so sore and swollen.  She’d cried more in the last few months than she ever had in her life.  It was weakness, so much goddamn weakness.  Her weakness had led to Steve getting shot, to all the twists that had resulted in Project: Insight’s launch, to this monumental mistake.  Loving Steve, hungering for Steve… _addiction_.  That was what had stressed and nearly destroyed her friendship with Clint.  That was what had gotten her pregnant.  And Clint had died because she’d been _too weak_ to stop herself.

Well, she wasn’t going to leave Clint now.  This definitely _was_ irrational, but she kept thinking if she just stayed there at his side, he’d wake up.  This was all some sort of horrific nightmare, and she’d wake up and find out none of it had actually happened.  Not HYDRA’s plot against them.  Not Omega Red.  Not Clint’s death.  _She_ would wake up, and he’d be at her side, the same as he’d always been.  Loyal and strong, coolly pragmatic with that wry sense of humor he’d always had, gentle and caring and understanding her so completely without her ever having to venture a word.  She closed her aching eyes and let herself remember him, picture him like that.  That half a curl of a smile.  The way he stood, always so still with his bow drawn, eyes so sharp and protective.  She could almost convince herself this was real.  Almost.  That was, until she opened her eyes and saw the gray sheet covering the bed.  She looked away.

“I can see you blaming yourself, Natasha.”  The voice took her by surprise, and she startled and turned.  Thor was at the door.  He’d gathered his blond hair into a loose pony tail that rested on the back of his neck.  His face was lax with sorrow, a worried frown curling his mouth and his eyes teeming with the need to help her.  She knew very little about Thor; their one and only encounter had been during the Battle of New York, so she was far more acquainted with the Asgardian’s impressive and mighty fighting style than she was with the man himself.  Seeing him like this, dressed in a normal person’s clothes with grief all over his face and a plate with a sandwich in one hand and a bottle of water in another…  He smiled faintly.  “You’ve no cause to do so.  Come.”

She was tempted to dismiss him the same as she’d dismissed everyone else.  She didn’t want or need his help.  But she didn’t send him away.  There was something so genuinely sincere about him, and so stubborn.  She didn’t think she (or probably anyone else on this planet) could make him leave.  So she gave a small nod, standing stiffly and giving Clint’s body one final, miserable appraisal.  Then she turned and let Thor lead her to another room that was clean and empty.  The lights flickered on as they entered.  It was a break room of sorts, with a nice table and a few chairs.  Dead on her feet and even deader inside, Natasha sat in one.  Thor set the plate in front of her and the bottle of water.  He was gone for a moment only to return with a blanket that he wrapped around her.  She grabbed it gratefully, pulling it tighter.  “You must eat.”

She knew that.  It was hard to care enough, to motivate herself enough, but she did.  The sandwich tasted good despite the nausea churning in her stomach, and before she even realized it, she was mostly done with it.  Thor was standing at the window on the other side of the room, gazing out over Manhattan.  The lines of his large physique were tense, strong with unfathomable power.  He was protecting her, keeping watch, a sentinel unlike any other.  The clouds were thick upon the city, hanging low and threatening a cold rain.  She idly wondered if that was his doing, if his own grief could alter the weather, or if this was simply one more day in a long string of them in which no one could see the sun.  “I hope the others will put an end to this plot against us and against your world,” he commented quietly.

The way he said that sounded so simple, but Natasha knew it would be anything but.  They were silent until Thor grew tired of inspecting the city below and turned to face her.  “I was unaware that you and Captain Rogers were romantically involved.”

“We weren’t when we all fought Loki together,” she returned softly.  She didn’t really want to talk about this (or anything else) but the words came all the same.  “It wasn’t something either of us really expected.”

“Love rarely is.”

That gave Natasha pause.  She felt her throat constrict with a sudden rush of emotion, grief and fear and joy, and she tugged the blanket even tighter to cover her abdomen.  “Honestly, perhaps this is neither the time nor the place to speak of this, but I had thought at the time that you and Agent Barton were…”

“Sometimes we were.  Clint…”  She couldn’t finish at first, not until she drew a deep breath to calm her aching heart.  “Clint was a lot of things to me.”  _A friend.  A lover.  A partner._   She thought about what he’d said to her back when they had rescued Steve from SHIELD.  _“I love you.  Not like he does.  I know that.  But I still do, and you love me, too.”_   She had.  She had so much, and she had taken him for granted.  Used him like she’d used so many others.  _“I let it go, Nat.  I let you go, and for a while I could convince myself that it didn’t hurt, but so help me, it did.”_   She’d hurt him.  She’d hurt Steve.  And she’d hurt herself.  Now they were all paying the price for it.

Thor seemed to realize what she was feeling.  “You do yourself and the children you carry ill with so much pain,” he said.  That snapped her from her thoughts.  “Darkness has no place in your heart.”

“You don’t know me,” she returned, though without heat.  “You have no idea what I’ve done.”  _How much darkness there is._

“No, I do not know you, at least not beyond what I saw when you fought valiantly at my side.  However, if Barton and Rogers love you enough to make such sacrifices for you, then you should not doubt yourself.  Worthiness often times cannot be seen by its bearer.”

She stared at Thor, his calm eyes and gentle smile, and she felt truly comforted for the first time since Clint had died.  It was like a lifetime ago even though it hadn’t even been an hour.  He was right, of course.  And Steve had said the same thing.  The more she feared and hated the choices that had been made on her behalf, the more she dishonored those who made them.  Love was selflessness.  Love was understanding, forgiving, seeing _beyond_ the darkness.  Clint had done that for her, had started her on the right path out of the darkness and toward the light.  And Steve guided her now.  She managed something of a weak nod despite herself.  “Thank you,” she softly said.  Having Thor there, standing watch over her…  It felt good.  It wasn’t Steve and it wasn’t Clint, but she wasn’t alone.  She and her children weren’t alone.

He nodded, too.  But before he could say anything further, JARVIS’ voice resounded.  “Lord Thor, Agent Hill requires your presence immediately.  She is in the command center.”

Cold fear left Natasha reeling, but only for a moment.  She stood, dumping the blanket to the floor.  If Maria needed Thor…  _Something’s gone wrong._   Thor looked around helplessly.  “Where–”

“Come on,” Natasha said, turning and leading him out into the hallway.

Thor shook his head slightly.  “You should rest and–”  Her glare silenced him.  “As you wish.”  Together they ran out of the infirmary, Thor hardly pausing at all to summon his hammer to him where it had been atop one of the cluttered counters in the lab.  The elevator was waiting for them at the end of the hallway, and JARVIS immediately took them up a few floors to the command center.

When they reached Hill, she looked extremely troubled, and that was saying something for a person of her poise.  “What happened?” Natasha demanded, wiping the remains of the wetness from her raw and aching eyes.

Hill transferred the conversation coming over her earpiece to the speakers in the room, and Tony’s desperate voice was immediately booming.  “We need help!  Hill, are you getting this?  We’ve got a warehouse full of poison and a very pissed-off Hulk trying to kill us!”

 _Oh, my God._   A roar Natasha recognized all too well blasted over the communications link, and that chilly wave assailing her body turned positively icy.  Hill shook her head, flustered and frustrated.  “Stark, I need more information!”

“Fuck!” snarled Tony, and the sound of something smashing followed.  “Jesus!  J, patch them into the HUD!”

Almost immediately the holographic displays all around the central table lit up and they were seeing what Iron Man was seeing.  Natasha’s heart all but stopped.  It was chaos, a smear of motion and color, and Tony was firing at something huge and green that was chasing something else.  _Someone_ else.  Someone with blond hair and a blue jacket.  Steve’s jacket.  She couldn’t breathe.  A thousand horrible memories and nightmares smacked into her calm all at once, memories and nightmares of the Hulk charging after her, coming after her, trying to _crush_ her in the bowels of the helicarrier.  “What’s happening?” she gasped, looking frantically at Hill.

“The warehouse was loaded with the insanity serum,” Hill tightly explained.  _No._   Of all the things she’d anticipated, _that_ hadn’t been it.  Steve had sunk Brushov’s ships full of the serum.  Steve had stopped Brushov from selling it, distributing it, unleashing it on the world.  This wasn’t fucking possible!  But they hadn’t known six months ago how Brushov had been connected to Lukin and HYDRA and they hadn’t realized SHIELD was HYDRA.  SHIELD had gotten its hands on a sample during her detox from it.  _Goddamn it._   Her fury was burning hot and unforgiving.  Maria shook her head helplessly.  “And Banner was exposed.”

“Exposed doesn’t really fucking cover this!” Stark cried.  “He got a fucking face full of this shit!”

“Steve?” Natasha asked, barely able to control her panic.

Maria was trying to explain.  “He was hit with it, too, but he seems unaffected.  Stark, what about Wilson?”

“We got him clear, but we’re in serious trouble here!  We need Thor!  And HYDRA’s launching some–”

A heart-stopping howl drowned everything out.  Natasha watched in absolute horror as the Hulk stopped for a brief second, green muscles bulging and face twisted in a baleful glower as he clenched his fists and wailed again.  She’d never seen him like this, not even when Loki and his evil had spurned Bruce into losing control and attacking her.  Even then there’d been some small part of _Bruce_ in the monster’s eyes, some touch of conscious restraint.  This was unbridled rage, birthed by the insanity serum and driven wild beyond all imagination.  “Oh, my God,” Hill whispered.  “If he gets loose…”

The Hulk yelled yet again, like he was in pain, tormented by the sheer intensity of his fury, of the madness coursing through his veins.  She couldn’t exactly see what he was screaming at, but then Tony shifted to the right.  Steve was in front of him, backing up, hands raised in submission.  She knew him so well she could see the terror in his eyes that he was struggling to control, the desperation bordering on panic.  “Bruce,” he gasped.  He looked miraculously unhurt so far.  “You need to listen to me.  Listen to my voice.  _Listen._   You know me.”  That took her back, back to that hold in Brushov’s ship where she’d been the one insane and driven to hurt those she loved.  The memories were coming fast and unbidden, tormented her exhausted mind until she shuddered.  “It’s alright.  You’re going to be okay.  Just calm down.  Bruce, no…  No, Bruce!  _Bruce!”_

The Hulk charged.  He put his massive fist straight through the wall in front of which Steve had been standing, and for an awful eternity, Natasha thought he’d been hit.  But he’d rolled to the side and was running, running as fast as he possibly could across what looked like an empty warehouse.  There were dead men everywhere, and Steve was bounding over them, lightning quick.  The Hulk was chasing him with a frustrated cry.

“He’s gonna kill the Cap!” Tony cried in hoarse panic.  He jerked over to Sam, who was tucked into a corner on his knees, panting and shaking and looking feverish.  Obviously he’d been hit with the serum as well.  They could see from Iron Man’s sensors that Sam’s heart was racing, that he was bad off but not as bad off as he could have been.  Tony’s hoarse, desperate cry seemed to shake the Tower.  “Thor, for fuck’s sake, _get over here now!_ ”

Thor was moving quickly.  He had to go.  He was the only one of them with even a chance of standing toe to toe with the Hulk like this.  “Wait, wait!” Maria cried.  She shoved an earpiece into his hand and a tracking device.  “Stay on comms so I can tell you where to go.  _Hurry.”_   Thor nodded and ran for the elevator.  JARVIS was already telling him he would take him to the roof.

“Tony,” Natasha gasped, trying hard to not succumb to the fear pulsing through her veins at the sight of the Hulk _destroying_ the entire structure of the warehouse to get to the man she loved.  “Tony, how did this happen?  The insanity serum’s–”

“They turned it airborne, and they’ve got some mechanism to unleash it.  They were launching drones from the airport here – maybe they already have – and I’m guessing they’re loaded with this insanity shit.  If those things get anywhere _near_ the city, Banner going on a rampage is going to be the least of our problems!”

The horror of HYDRA’s plan left the two women silent and reeling a moment.  Natasha watched the blood drain from Maria’s face, _felt_ it drain from her own, felt her heart pound and her stomach drop.  “Iron Man,” Maria said once she gathered herself, “you need to stop them.”

“No shit!” Tony returned.  “But I’m kinda busy here!”  He was.  He was firing his repulsors at the Hulk again, trying to slow him down, to distract him from chasing Steve.  That got the beast’s attention.  He turned from where he had Steve pinned near the remains of one of the walls and thundered toward Iron Man.  “Great!  Now what?”

“Stark!” Hill snapped.  “Thor is coming.  You need to leave _right now_ and stop those drones!”

“Aw, goddamn it all to hell…  I can’t abandon them like this!”

“There’s no choice!”  Tony still didn’t leave, hovering near the top of the warehouse as the Hulk raged closer.  Hill lost her patience.  _“Tony!”_

Tony let loose a rough exclamation of anger, and the HUD blurred as he shot up and out of the warehouse.  _No, no, don’t leave them, don’t leave Steve, no no no–_ But he had to.  Still, Natasha could hardly stand to watch when Tony looked back down to see if the Hulk was pursuing him.  The Hulk’s cry was far enough away now that it was muffled, and he was going back to demolishing the warehouse with Steve and Sam trapped inside it.  In less than a second, Stark was too far away to see anything more, soaring through the rainclouds toward the Teterboro airport.  Through the curtains of thick gray, she saw a runway, some hangars and buildings, and a tower.  The airport wasn’t very big, but it serviced some larger aircraft.  And it was currently overrun with smaller aircraft, smaller and thinner and solidly silver with not even a windshield.  They were already airborne, dozens of them.  JARVIS was quickly targeting them on the HUD.  “There are more than fifty HYDRA drones, sir.”

“Christ…  I need help here!” Tony moaned.  Iron Man picked up speed, streaking through the sky to chase the drones as they turned together like a flock of birds.  They were headed southeast, toward New York City.  “Should have finished Wilson’s suit…  Hindsight and all.”  He gave a rough, rueful, _pained_ chuckle.  “Get me some support!  Air Force!  National Guard!  You still have strings to pull?  Fucking _pull_ them!”

“Just engage, Stark!”  Hill pulled her cellphone out of her pocket.  Her hands were almost shaking.

Natasha sucked in a deep breath.  She didn’t know what the payload of these drones was, but if it was anything beyond something _really_ small, they could be facing the entire population of the island of Manhattan or worse turned into mindless monsters.  Her mind raced as she turned to Hill.  “Maria, Fury told me after the STRIKE Team brought me back from Russia that SHIELD scientists were working on a cure for the insanity serum.  Was that true?  Did they find one?”

Maria’s eyes glazed in thought before widening in understanding.  She lowered her phone from her ear.  “They did, I think.  Fury mentioned something about it, but I don’t know…  JARVIS, can you search the file dump?”

“Already on it, Agent Hill.”

A few endless seconds later, the computer chirped and a file appeared before them.  It was a manifest.  Hill examined it quickly.  Her face broke in unmistakable relief.  “Thank God.  Finally, something goes our way.  They finished it, tested it, and validated it.  The cure for the serum is _here_ , in the Vault in SHIELD HQ in Times Square.”  Natasha could hardly believe their good fortune.  Something finally going their way was right.  “And they made a fairly large batch of it.  Not enough to save the city, but enough to maybe stem a flood.”

“Enough to bring the Hulk out of this?” she asked.

Hill shook her head.  “I don’t know.  But it’s all we have.  The Vault has a level 9 clearance.  So unless Fury took it, it should still be there.”

Natasha nodded.  “Then let’s go.”

Hill looked displeased.  “Steve told you to–”

She almost lost her temper with everyone treating her like some sort of invalid.  “You want to waste time arguing about this?  I’m not any safer here than I am out there, and you may need my help.  So let’s _go._ ”

One of the things Natasha had always liked about Hill was that she appreciated decisive action, logic, and utilitarianism above all else.  Emotion was rarely a consideration.  So her face hardened and she nodded her agreement without more convincing than that.  Hill went to a room in the back of the command center that Natasha knew housed weapons.  She returned with two guns, extra rounds, and two earpieces.  Wordlessly she handed Natasha her share, and the two of them ran side-by-side to the elevator.  Once inside, Maria ordered, “Take us to the garage.”

She was on her phone after that, dialing a contact in the United States Air Force.  She was talking with rushed words, and Natasha faded from the discussion.  She checked the guns, holstering each of them on her hips.  Then she drew a deep breath, trying to find that calm place inside her again.  It was more fleeting now than ever before, with the flutter of queasiness in her belly and so much grief for Clint still haunting her and even more fear for Steve making her heart pound in agony, but that mulishness lasted just for the first moment.  She grabbed her composure, hauled it to her and shoved her emotions down deep, smothering them in the cool quiet of purpose.  She could do this.  _Get the cure for the serum._   This was what she could do.  It was how she could avenge Clint and help Steve.  Save the man she loved.  The father…  She could hardly make herself think it, but she did.

The father of her children.

She had to do _everything_ she could to save him.

“Stark, what’s your status?” Hill called as the elevator neared its destination.  “I’ve got a fighter squadron incoming from Stewart.  I also contacted the National Guard and emergency response if this gets out of hand.”

“Oh, thank God,” came Tony’s exasperated response.  “Iron Patriot is inbound.”

“Rhodes?”

“None other.  Got tired of waiting for you.”  If Maria was miffed at that, it didn’t show.  “I’ve keep them busy, taken out a couple, but I’m worried about destroying too many of them.  If that crap gets in the air…”  What Stark didn’t finish saying was frightfully clear.  Having the airborne insanity serum anywhere in the lower atmosphere might be dangerous.  If it dissolved into the rain clouds, it could be catastrophic.  HYDRA had truly made a plan to threaten _everyone everywhere._   “Thankfully these things seem interested in fighting me, but I can’t keep them all tied up.  I’m trying to get JARVIS to break into the feed controlling them, but it’s encrypted.  Shit!”  Tony’s voice broke off sharply.  “They’re going to be over Manhattan in less than five minutes!”

“Do what you can,” Maria ordered.

“Trying!”

“Thor, where are you?” Maria called.

“I am nearly there.”  Natasha held her breath, praying Thor would reach Steve in time before the Hulk hurt him or worse.  As strong as Steve was, he was no match for the Hulk, especially if the monster was being driven by the aggression and rage of the insanity serum.  “I see both Captain Rogers and Doctor Banner.  They are in the field outside.”

Natasha couldn’t help herself.  “Thor, is he–”

She didn’t get the chance to finish her question.  Thor gave a loud, ragged cry; Natasha couldn’t be sure if it was in pain or dismay or simply a battle yell of effort.  She shared a horrified glance with Maria, but there was no time to press the Asgardian because the elevator reached the garage.  It was huge and overly elaborate and packed with expensive cars.  SHIELD HQ was just on the west side of Times Square; it was close enough that they could run there, and given it was rush hour, that might have been preferable.  However, a car afforded them more options, particularly if they needed to transport anything of any size.  Natasha had been to the Vault below SHIELD HQ only once; it was underground, accessible through only one of the main lobby elevators.  Hopefully this would be as easy as getting there, going down, finding what they needed, and getting out.  With both Stark and Rhodes, one of them could surely bring the cure to Banner before he… _Hurry._

They quickly found a black SUV, a Land Rover, and ran to it.  They all but jumped inside.  The keys were there already.  Only someone as ridiculously rich as Tony Stark would leave the keys to a car this expensive ripe for the taking inside said car.  Natasha supposed they were fortunate he was that careless.  She strapped into the passenger seat as Maria turned the car on and threw it into drive.  Tires shrieked as they pulled out of the parking spot and rapidly made their way to the exit onto the side road that would lead to 42nd Street.

They didn’t get any further than that.

“Damn it,” Maria whispered, paling as she slammed on the brakes.  Ahead there were dozens of NYPD cars and SWAT vehicles, lights flashing brightly in the dim daylight.  They were veritably blocking their way, lined up thickly in an impassable barrier.  FBI agents stood at the forefront, guns trained on their car.  Hill looked frantically over her shoulder and shifted into reverse, pressing on the gas without warning.  Natasha lurched, bracing herself on the dash, as Maria spun them expertly on the narrow side street, barely avoiding a dumpster.  She gunned it in the other direction, but it didn’t matter.  A slew of police vehicles pulled in front of their exit to block their escape before they even got close.  Maria stopped the SUV shortly again.  “There’s no time for this!” she seethed.

“I don’t think they care,” Natasha murmured, and she watched in dread as Senator Wenham emerged from one of the government cars in front of them.  He was dressed in a suit and top coat, but she could see a bullet proof vest under that.  His face was as banal as she’d remembered it, nonthreatening, and she hated herself for being fooled.  He’d orchestrated all of this, from plotting HYDRA’s attack when the eyes and ears of US intelligence were severely hampered by SHIELD’s destruction to launching the hunt against her.  He was evil, and she hadn’t seen it.

And he was coming right for her.  Him and the _army_ of police, SWAT officers, and FBI agents he’d brought to arrest her.

“What now?” Maria asked helplessly.  It wasn’t often she didn’t know what to do or deferred to a subordinate for guidance.  But this wasn’t SHIELD.  Not anymore.  “There’s nowhere–”

“Agent Romanoff,” Wenham called.  He was flanked by half a dozen FBI agents, all of whom had their guns and rifles pointed at the two women.  “Step out of the car.”

For the briefest moment, Natasha entertained the foolish, _stupid_ possibility that if she surrendered herself, they might let Maria go.  Maybe she could barter her cooperation for Hill’s freedom.  Then she could continue on to the Vault, get the cure, and stop all of this.  But Natasha was too smart to trust, not now and not ever again.  Even if she cooperated, Wenham was HYDRA.  He’d never let Hill out of his clutches.

Unfortunately, struggling seemed to be as fruitless as negotiating.  The agents already had their guns aimed securely at Hill.  Natasha could have screamed in frustration.  She was so goddamn sick and tired of this bullshit!  “Get out of the car, Agent Romanoff.  Don’t make me ask again,” Wenham calmly ordered, though his voice was heavy with his unspoken threat.

“Don’t let them take the twins,” Maria softly said.

“Not now,” Natasha whispered, ignoring her.  She couldn’t deal with this now.  Her mind was racing, fighting to find a way out of this.  Every second they spent trapped here was one more that HYDRA was using to douse the city in the insanity serum, one more that Steve could be injured – _dying_ – at the hands of the Hulk who was enraged beyond any semblance of control.  She wanted to scream, to fight, to _kill_ someone to ease her own panic and frustration and–

“You need to run,” Maria reminded, turning finally to look at her.  “Doesn’t matter what happens to me.  If they get their hands on the twins, nobody in the world will be safe.”

 _You think I don’t know that?  It’s all I’ve been sure of since this started!_   And what did it matter now?  With HYDRA’s poison bearing down on the city?  Natasha was too lost in her own shock and anger to manage the retort, though.  Wenham boldly walked to her door.  She was tempted to keep it locked, to demand that Hill gun it and run through the blockade as much as possible, but she didn’t.  “Open the door,” Wenham ordered.  Through the glass the command was muffled but no less pressing.  “Now.  This is your last chance.”

What choice was there?  _None._   Natasha gritted her teeth, her entire body shaking in barely restrained rage, as she opened the door of the car.  A few FBI agents were quick to grab her by the arm and haul her out of her seat.  They were even less gentle with Maria, dragging her from the driver’s side and pinning her across the hood of the car at gunpoint while they patted her down.  The two ex-SHIELD agents were expertly searched and disarmed in a matter of seconds.  They took their earpieces.  Natasha was rigid, fighting to stay still with so many weapons trained on them both.  She wanted to scream.  Wenham shook his head at her.  “There’s no sense in fighting.  There’s no place in the country you can hide now.  And obviously running back home didn’t work.  You’re coming with us.”

She glared at him.  This was starting to appear exactly like chaos.  A scramble for power among HYDRA’s factions.  SHIELD.  The Red Room.  The FBI and the CIA.  Corrupted officials.  And it seemed like whoever had _her_ in his greedy, evil fingers had the power to control everyone else.  “So it’s your turn to try now?” she hissed.

“If I’d known from the beginning why Lukin and Malik wanted you, I would have had you arrested weeks ago.  I had you right in my hands at that hearing, and I let you go.  Trust me when I tell you it won’t happen again.  You may belong to the Red Room,” Wenham said lowly, “but Captain America and everything that comes from him belong to the US government.  Stern was a fat bastard, but he was right about one thing.  I think Rogers would be willing to do just about anything to save you.”  He smiled cruelly.  “That’s if he survives this.  And if he doesn’t, well, we have options now, don’t we?”  His gaze flicked to her stomach.

“You fucking son of a bitch,” she snarled.

He grabbed her arm and pushed her to a van where a man with handcuffs was waiting.  Natasha’s heart plummeted.  _Not again…  Please…_

Somebody somewhere heard her prayer, though the method of her salvation was not at all what she’d wanted.

There was a deep roar, almost like the one she’d heard from the Hulk over the comm link, and for a second she irrationally wondered if the Hulk hadn’t somehow found his way here, if Bruce hadn’t come to his senses and was charging to their rescue or if Steve hadn’t led him here because he was coming to save her.  But none of that was true.  And she recognized that guttural cry when her brain got passed those silly hopes.

_Omega Red._

The police and FBI agents opened fire on the monster as he charged from the other end of the street.  There was screaming and howling, cars and men flying through the air.  Natasha didn’t waste a second, didn’t even look at what was happening, jabbing her elbow into Wenham’s midriff and snatching her arm away to belt him across the face.  Maria was breaking loose from the men holding her as well, using their horrified shock to her advantage.  Bullets flew everywhere, haphazard and violent, and they ducked as they ran toward the blockade ahead.  The men there were already fighting Omega Red, uselessly unloading their guns, so they did nothing to stop the two women from quickly dispatching them.  Natasha was as fast as lightning and as fluid as water, dancing through the line with rapid, deadly precision.  She snatched a fallen rifle and catapulted onto the hood of one of the cop cars.  Maria was right behind her.  She staggered with a cry, and Natasha whirled, seeing her clutching her leg where she’d been clipped by a bullet.  “Go!” Hill shouted, her face creased with anger and pain as she slumped against the car.

“No,” Natasha returned, reaching down and pulling her up.  She could feel the serum thrum in her veins as she bore all of Maria’s weight, bounding from car to car with speed and strength beyond what she could normally muster.  There were more screams and a positively inhuman howl, and once they were back on the pavement on the other side of the cars, she turned just once to glance over her shoulder.  Omega Red had pushed through the vehicles at the opposite end of the street, many of which were smashed and burning, and he was draining the life out of the dozens of cops and agents fighting him, one after another after another.  His tentacles were moving like whips, grabbing and constricting and killing with abandon.  He was insatiable, _driven_ by hunger.  One of the tentacles morphed into a blade as it flew, just like when it had stabbed Steve.  It drove straight through Wenham’s back as he tried to run and came out his front.  The man’s skin was drained of its color, turning instantly from an angry, flushed red to a dying gray and then to a ghostly white as his life was drawn from him.  When he was nothing more than a sack of bones and shriveled flesh, Omega Red tossed him aside like he’d done to all his other victims.  Bullets slammed into his huge, corded body, but they didn’t even alter his balance, let alone do damage.  He caught Natasha’s gaze, hers widening in horror and his narrowing in hungered glee.  _Oh, God._

He was coming for her.

“Run,” Maria moaned from beside her.  Natasha hauled the other woman up tighter to her side and struggled down the street.  People had noticed the hulking monster at this point (as if the gun fight wasn’t panic-inducing enough) and were running away, screaming.  Natasha glanced over her shoulder again as they struggled down 42nd Street.  Lukin was there as well, following behind his beast as Omega Red chased them and snatching people up left and right.  “Just leave me!” Maria snapped.

“No!” Natasha shouted hoarsely and yanked the limping woman harshly and more insistently, forcing Hill to keep pace.  Ahead there was a veritable wall of pedestrians.  “Get out of the way!  _Get out of the way!_ ”  The people around them tried, scattering in utter panic.  Some tripped and were nearly trampled under the stampede.  Car horns blared and vehicles smashed into each other as people stopped short and tried to turn the other way or avoid the crowds running across the street.  She could hear Omega Red behind her, smashing things, laughing and tormenting the innocents trying to flee as he pursued her.  The evil bastard was making a game out of this.  And he was gaining on them.

Ahead was the cross-street, but where could they possibly run?  SHIELD HQ – not that that was any safer – was blocks away.  They were _never_ going to make it!

Maria clutched her leg and tried again to pull away.  “Goddamn it, Natasha, leave me!”

“No!”

“That’s a goddamn order!  I’m slowing you down!  _Go!_ ”

Natasha couldn’t spare the breath to argue.  She ducked, dragging Maria down with her, as one of Omega Red’s tentacles swiped overhead.  Suddenly a car skidded to a stop right in front of them where the sidewalk ended.  The driver’s door was flung open, and Sharon appeared over the top.  And she had a grenade launcher.  “Get down!” she yelled.

Natasha yanked Maria to the sidewalk, not knowing how Sharon had found them, how she’d known to bring heavy weaponry, and not particularly caring to find out.  The grenade launcher ignited loudly, sending its shot toward the monster.  The street shook with the deafening explosion.  Omega Red screamed.  Sharon was already reloading.  “Come on!” she shouted.  “Come on!  _Come on!”_

She fired once more, and Natasha didn’t wait to see if Omega Red survived the second strike.  She pulled Maria up and shoved her toward Sharon’s car, another SUV, this one a Porsche of some sort.  She opened the rear door and helped Maria clamber inside before following.  “Carter, go, go, go!”

Sharon tossed the gun into the passenger seat.  She slammed her foot onto the gas pedal before shifting the car into gear, tires screaming and burning.  Then the powerful engine engaged and they flew out onto the street.

Natasha barely got the door shut before she was flung to the left, Hill crashing down on top of her with a hoarse, pained cry.  Natasha ripped off her sweater, revealing a couple of spaghetti-strap tanks she’d layered on earlier and Steve’s dog tags.  She pressed the cloth tightly on Hill’s bleeding thigh.  The other woman groaned, jerking and slamming her hands down on top of Natasha’s to put more pressure on the wound.  “Sharon–”

“JARVIS told me you guys were in trouble,” Sharon explained.  “This is more than trouble, I have to say!”  She swerved sharply to the left, avoiding a truck coming at them.  “Where–”

“SHIELD HQ!” Natasha replied.  A roar seemed to vibrate the city around them.  She chanced looking behind them again.  Sure enough, Omega Red was exiting the cloud of smoke and debris intact.  Was there anything capable of killing him?  _Maybe the Hulk.  And Thor.  Only they’re busy fighting each other!_

“Hang on!”  Sharon ripped the steering wheel to the right now, driving wildly through the thick traffic.  Natasha managed to keep pressure on Maria’s leg despite the jostling.  “We have to get out of the city!  Get away from it!  Get you some place safe!”

Natasha wanted to scream in frustration.  She knew everyone meant well, but weren’t they listening?  “There is no place safe!” she returned hotly.  “There’s nowhere we can go where he can’t find me!  And I’m not leaving Steve!  Or Tony or Sam!”  Her words were coming faster and faster, fueled by rage and panic and desperation, and she didn’t give a damn.  “I’m not leaving any of you!  Do you get it?  _No one else_ is going to die for me!”

Maria was staring at her in shock, like she didn’t recognize her or hadn’t realized how much she’d changed from the young SHIELD agent she’d known just a few short months back.  Sharon was lost, distracted, her wide brown eyes glancing repeatedly in the rearview mirror.  She gave a riled yelp, slamming on the brakes at the last second to avoid crashing into the backs of the cars ahead.  Natasha banged into the passenger seat, smacking her head into the stiff leather.  “Hold on,” Sharon gasped.  Ahead the traffic was impassable, thick with rush hour.  She threw the car in reverse, hitting another SUV hard enough to nearly tip it as she backed up wildly.  For a moment Natasha feared she didn’t know what she was doing; driving like this required practice and skill, and she’d never really worked with Sharon before in the field.  But after a few, expertly executed turns and pushes (she wasn’t at all afraid to plow her way through), they were zooming down 6th Avenue.

Omega Red didn’t give up.  He was still behind them, wreaking havoc and destroying everything in his path as he chased them.  Natasha whirled just in time to see a car being thrown down the street.  Then two more sailed after it, and people were shrieking and scrambling.  “Drive faster,” she said to Sharon.

“I’m trying!” the other woman gasped, weaving in and out of traffic in a controlled frenzy. 

Natasha reached around to the front passenger seat, snatching up the grenade launcher.  Protecting innocents had never been something with which she’d concerned herself; even after joining SHIELD, it hadn’t typically been her highest priority.  She was a weapon, and weapons fought wars, and wars caused collateral damage.  However, since becoming an Avenger and being partnered with Captain America, she’d been far more aware of the innocents caught in the crossfire and how important it was to limit casualties.  There were too many civilians around them.  Her gut clenched.  “Get us away from Times Square!”

“I’m trying!” Sharon snapped again, irritation bleeding into her tone.  “It’s hard to avoid going where we need to go!”  The car jolted left, nearly tipping as she plowed onto a sidewalk.  She pounded on the horn, trying to get the unsuspecting pedestrians out of the way.  Natasha traded worried glances ahead and behind, Omega Red getting closer and closer until he leapt and completely disappeared.

“Oh, no,” Natasha whispered.

The top of the car was crushed.  Sharon cried out, ducking and trying to cover herself as the windshield shattered and everything above them came down.  Natasha pushed Maria beneath her, fumbling for the gun.  The roof buckled with a shriek and the grinding moan of metal being pulverized.  Sharon yanked the steering wheel to the right and then the left, barely dodging cars, scraping along the side of a truck, trying to dislodge Omega Red.  He wasn’t letting go, of course, and with a deep, amused laugh, his tentacles ripped the car to shreds around them.  Sharon screamed.  One tentacle wrapped around her throat, squeezing, choking her voice away.  It started its awful glow just as Natasha finally got a grip on the gun.  Omega Red peeled the roof of the car away like the top of a tin can.

“Get off!” she snarled, jabbing the grenade launcher right up into the bastard’s humongous chest and yanking on the trigger.  The explosion knocked her back, heat rushing over her unpleasantly, but the grenade detonating knocked Omega Red loose.  The tentacle unfurled from Sharon, and the other retracted from the car as the demon was blown clear away.

Natasha blinked, shocked that that had worked.  She ripped her gaze to the back and saw the monster writhing and trapped in a burning mess behind them.  That wouldn’t kill him.  That wouldn’t even stop him.  She was seriously starting to fear nothing could.  “Sharon,” Maria gasped, leaning up from where she was squished under Natasha.  “Sharon!  Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Carter gasped.  She had a hand at her throat, rubbing vigorously, and she was violently shaking with the close-call.  “He didn’t…  Oh, my God.”  She turned sharply onto 46th Street.  The car was wrecked, the engine dying with the damage done to it, and all three of them got out in the intersection of 46th and 6th.  Natasha saw what Sharon had seen almost instantly.

Sliding through the clouds to the west, the drones were coming.  There were dozens and dozens of them, cutting across the sky in an uncoordinated attempt to maintain some sort of flock.  And flying among them like aerial shepherds were Iron Man, Iron Patriot, and a slew of fighter jets.  They were engaged in some sort of odd, one-sided dogfight.  Iron Man and Iron Patriot were trying to keep the drones grouped together while dodging their fairly sizeable arsenal of weapons.  Stark, Rhodes, and the pilots were clearly on the evasive, not returning fire unless absolutely necessary.  They didn’t want to risk destroying the drones only a few hundred feet above the city, didn’t want to chance the insanity serum being released over the millions of innocent people down below. 

Maria grabbed her StarkPhone, punching into it desperately and putting the call on speaker.  Tony’s strained voice answered a moment later.  “You’ve reached the Avengers’ mascot for exercises in complete futility.  How may I help you bring about your apocalypse today?”

“Stark!” Maria cried, watching the cloud of drones coming ominously closer.  “Get them out of here!”

“What the hell does it look like we’re trying to do?  Rhodey!”

“Shit!” came Rhodes’ response.  “I see it!”  Iron Patriot was a streak of blue and red against gray.  Drops of rain splattered down, cold and fat, and Natasha shivered and squinted as she watched Rhodes engaging some of the drones attempting to break away.  One swooped low and Iron Patriot went after it, streaking over 46th Street to catch it.  Unable to reduce its speed to properly release its load of serum, it went higher again.  The fighter jets were forming something of a perimeter, trying to keep the battle contained.  “Futility is right.  This is getting us nowhere fast.”

“JARVIS is into their subroutines,” Tony said.  “He’s trying – _fuck_ – trying to insert new code in there to get them to _follow_ us higher into the atmosphere.  They dump _anything_ down here, in these clouds…  Even if it doesn’t get down to the ground, it’ll make a red rain that ain’t going to be fun to be dancin’ in.  But if we can get them higher, redirect their targeting algorithm...  At five or ten thousand feet above the cloud base, the insanity serum will be too diluted to have any effect.”

“And then we can torch them,” Rhodes responded.

“Right.”

That plan was too complicated to follow with all of the chaos around them.  “Just get them away!” Hill demanded.  Another of the drones got loose; there were so many, and over the city, they were moving in force, trying to spread apart.  Another got away, zooming over their heads and heading north up 6th Avenue, and Iron Man had no choice but to destroy it.  A cloud of red dozens of yards wide and even more than that deep expanded, nearly as large as a city block, and mixed with the rain.  Down the street, it was drizzling blood.  And people were screaming.  “Stark, whatever you’re planning, you need to get them away from the city!”

“We’re trying!  JARVIS, hurry!”

Omega Red screamed.  Cars were flung across the intersection, smashing into buildings, ripping chunks of masonry clear away.  People were running, fleeing in panic away from the demon threatening them and heading instead right into the huge plume of red.  Sirens were wailing.  Omega Red suddenly appeared behind them, looking around wildly.  He spotted Natasha.  “God, no,” Sharon murmured.

Nothing more was said.  The three of them started running, Sharon and Natasha supporting Maria as they sprinted as fast as they could down 46th Street toward SHIELD HQ.  The building was a little further down, where 46th Street hit 7th Avenue.  One city block.  With the hell raging above them and the monster chasing them, it seemed impossible they would get there.

Omega Red swung a tentacle at them, cutting through the side of the building and smashing a store front.  More people screamed.  The streets were teeming with hustle and bustle, thousands of people literally trapped in a sudden slaughterhouse like unsuspecting sheep.  Frustration was driving Omega Red harsh and hard; he wasn’t stopping to feed any longer, indiscriminant in destroying and killing everything that stood between him and his prize.  A thud and the sound of weapons firing cut over the cacophony of panic and destruction, and Iron Patriot landed in front of Omega Red.  Missiles and guns and repulsors were shot, but that only aggravated the monster further.  He screamed in irritation, blond hair loose of its binding and wet in the now steadier rain, and he whipped his tentacles around Rhodes.  Rhodes dodged the first strike but couldn’t avoid the second, and the hit knocked him clear across the street and into a building.

That distraction gave them more time to put some distance between them and Omega Red but seconds only.  It wasn’t going to be enough.  It wasn’t going to matter.  Maria was running as fast as she could, as fast as anyone could expect, but it wasn’t fast enough.  Natasha’s heart was thundering, hot sweat mixing with cold rain.  She could hardly breathe, her lungs heaving and struggling to function over her terror and the crushing realization that she needed to leave them.  There was no choice.  They were never going to make it, not with that monster chasing them, bearing down on them, and Omega Red was _never_ going to let her go.  Sharon and Maria needed to get the cure, get the cure for the Hulk to save Steve and Sam, get the cure to save the people exposed to the insanity serum.  _No choice._   “Go!” she ordered, breaking away from the other two.  “Go and get the cure!  Get it to Bruce!”

“Romanoff!”

She didn’t wait to hear their denials, their demands that she not do this.  There was no other way.  She ran across the street until she was in the middle of it and turned around.  Iron Patriot was out of the rubble, foolishly reengaged with Omega Red.  “Rhodes,” she yelled.  She wasn’t so far away that he couldn’t hear her.  She’d worked with Rhodes before, during the fiasco at the Stark Expo some years back.  The man was calm and collected, reasonable and reliable, very much Stark’s opposite in that respect.  “Hill and Carter are going to come out of SHIELD HQ behind us with a cure for the insanity serum.  When they do, you need to get it to Banner.  Do you understand me?”

“What?” Rhodes responded.

Iron Man twisted overhead, breaking from the dog fight to waste a shot on Omega Red.  “JARVIS is in,” he announced in shaking relief.  Natasha could hear his voice over Maria’s phone.  She and Carter were waiting and watching – _why are you waiting?_ – down the road.  “Rhodey, I need you up here.  They’ve retargeted us.  We’re going to take these fuckers way up and blow the hell out of ’em!”

Natasha nearly lost her will with that announcement.  This was almost over.  JARVIS would hack the feed, get the drones to a much higher altitude where the poison would be too thin to be effective, and that would be the end of HYDRA’s plot to turn the city mad with rage.  They’d never have the chance to dump the insanity serum over the city.  The fighter jets were circling, trying to hold everything together, and Iron Man was flying higher again, dodging missiles and gunfire from the drones as he herded them anew.  She watched, hoping, praying.  In a matter of seconds, it could all end.

At least this part of it.  The Hulk was probably still insane with rage.  And Omega Red had spotted her again.  They were all still in very grave danger.  “Colonel Rhodes, do you hear me?”

Iron Patriot turned to her, eyes glowing and face stern.  “Affirmative!”  Then he shot up into the sky and joined Iron Man.  The sonic boom of the two armored suits nearly shook the city.  They rocketed up through the clouds, and the drones _went with them._   Relief assailed Natasha, and she closed her eyes for one blissful second.

Then Omega Red laughed.

She snapped her gaze to him, breathing harshly through her nose.  She narrowed her eyes.  The serum was thrumming again, hot inside her.  She let it go, let it course over her and _power_ her.  “Sharon, Maria, go.  Go now.”

“Natasha, don’t–”

 _“Go!”_   They hesitated only a second more before doing as she asked, running onward toward SHIELD HQ.  Natasha shifted further across the street, presenting a target to their pursuers and giving them time and distance.  Her gaze never shifted from the monster.  Omega Red was strolling toward her, his tentacles aloft near his head and twitching like they were anticipating what they were about to touch.  The streets had emptied, save for her, the monster, and his master.  Lukin was behind his pet, eyeing her coldly.  Natasha flicked her eyes to him, every muscle taut in her body.  Then she stared down the demon again.  She was alone against him, but she wasn’t about to submit.  Not now.  Not ever.  “You want me,” she hissed, “you come and get me.”

He snarled and charged, but she was already running.  She forced all the speed she could from herself, legs pumping, lungs straining to feed her muscles with enough oxygen to keep going.  Ahead was Times Square.  This was exactly where she _hadn’t_ wanted to go, not with so many tourists and people crowded into one place, but there was no choice now.  There were distant explosions, and she _prayed_ that was Stark and Rhodes taking out the drones.  At the sound of jets cutting across the sky, she chanced looking up.  The aircraft regrouped and then swooped low, guns firing at Omega Red as he came after her.  Natasha gasped in relief, sprinting faster and using the opportunity to put some distance between her and the monster.

The road practically exploded behind her, knocking her down.  Something whizzed over her head, and she ducked instinctively, knowing it was one of the tentacles and fearing tremendously he was reaching for her.  But it wasn’t aimed at her.  The carbonadium coiled around the tail of one of the jets as it passed low overhead, wrenching it violently from the sky and whipping it into a building.  It exploded when it struck with a ball of fire and a shockwave that broke and rattled windows up and down 46th Street.  The monster snatched the other jets, catching them as they screamed past and destroying them like an angry toddler with his toys.  Natasha grimaced before staggering to her feet and running again.  She was at Times Square, with all of its flashing lights and huge screens full of bright images and _people_.  “Run!” she breathlessly screamed as she flew into the massive area.  _“Run!  Get out of here!”_

Cries rent the air, shrill with panic, as Omega Red thundered after her.  She ducked and dodged his reaching hands, darting through the streets, lithely leaping to safety.  He was practically frothing when he stampeding after her, sweating and shaking and unhinged.  They danced like this for a moment, him trying to catch her using all of his power and the advantage of his size and her evading him using the same.  Yowling in ire, he grabbed a taxi that was in his way with both of his huge hands and threw it clear across Times Square.  People scattered as it hit, running in panic toward her.  Natasha could hardly breathe as she pushed her way through the flood, the close quarters considerably hampering her ability to maneuver.  “Get away from me!” she bellowed, though her voice was lost to the din.  “Get away!  Run!  Everyone, clear out!”

It was sheer pandemonium.  The few police officers that were there were struggling to figure out what was going on, shouting for people to stay where they were and keep calm.  That ended quickly enough when Omega Red charged in the center of Times Square.  Having lost sight of her in the chaos, he turned around wildly, scanning the crowd.  As awful as it was, Natasha was grateful to be lost in the throng.  She pushed harder, protecting her stomach as she was nearly elbowed, desperately looking for someplace to hide.  “Where are you?”  Omega Red’s furious cry echoed over the huge area, seemingly rattling the buildings.  People screamed louder, struggling to get away from him as he started tearing into the crowds.  His tentacles were lifting civilians away and knocking them aside, _digging_ for her.  Briefcases and bags and purses were sent flying, cries of abject terror shattering what had been a calm afternoon for these folk.  The monster was pulsing with anger and frustration.  “Where are you?  _Where are you?”_

 _Oh, God.  Somebody help me!_   Natasha struggled to cross the street, struggled to get free and get away before he spotted her.  “Enough, Black Widow!”  That was Lukin.  His voice rose above the din.  “If you wish to play cat and mouse, we will!  And you will lose!  You are alone here!  There is no one coming, no one to protect you now!”

Natasha finally ripped away from the massive crowd.  She jumped over a stopped car.  There were sirens wailing, police and SWAT vans coming along 7th Avenue and Broadway.  For a terrifying moment she thought these were more of Wenham’s men coming to arrest her, but they weren’t.  Some of the cops were quick to open fire on Omega Red, others trying to get people clear of the area.  Once again, the distraction they provided was advantageous (even if the monster immediately lashed out at them in rage), and Natasha ran.

She didn’t get very far.

Something snatched her ankle.  She went down hard, rolling and curling onto her side to avoid hurting her belly.  Blood rushed in her ears, but even the pounding of that didn’t blot out the screaming of the people around her or her own gasping cry.  She squirmed to see behind her, watching in horror as Omega Red swept the police and surrounding cars and people away like they were trash with his other tentacle.  The one around her leg held tight, slithering up her body to grab her arm as well.  “No!” she cried, kicking uselessly with her free leg.  “No!  Let go of me!”

The world fell away.  The people were gone.  The destruction was gone.  There was only Omega Red, smiling, ugly and violent and evil.  Having caught his prey, he was coming closer, almost languid with relief and joy.  Natasha squirmed uselessly.  There was no escape, nothing she could do, but still she struggled, even as those awful tentacles coiled tighter and tighter around her.  She could feel them crushing her bones together, crackling with power pent up and waiting for release.  _No, no, no!_   The tentacle grew impossibly longer, stretching across her lower belly in a sick caress, and tears burned in her eyes.  The monster was looming over her now, panting, giddy with elation and anticipation.  “No,” she whispered, trembling.  “Please…  Please don’t.”  _Steve, where are you?  Please!_   She was trapped.  Vulnerable.  Afraid like she’d _never_ been afraid before.  She was cold and wet and so, so sorry.  “Please don’t hurt them…”

There was a distant crack, sharp and loud, and Omega Red recoiled.  Natasha watched in shock as a huge bullet hole appeared in his right breast, spilling thick, dark blood for a moment but only just.  Still, it was enough to knock Omega Red back.  The crack came again and again.  One of the shots hit him in the head, and he recoiled in agony and anger, his tentacles loosening.  Natasha squirmed with renewed fervor.  The assault continued on the beast; somebody was firing on him with a large caliber, powerful gun, and while the shots weren’t doing much long-term damage, they were pushing the monster further and further away.  With her free hand she grabbed the coil around her stomach and yanked it away.  She slid her other arm free.  And her leg.  She staggered to her feet.

It wasn’t the police firing on him.  They were off to the side, trying to protect the citizens as they fled.  The shots had come from behind her.

She whirled just in time to see a black-clad figure drop a hundred feet down from a section of One Times Square.  A sable cloak fluttered around him as he jumped, but it didn’t entirely hide the sheen of silver at his side.  His combat boots struck the top of an abandoned truck, smashing it down, and he leapt from that to land to her right.  His hood fell away.

It was the Winter Soldier.

Her first and only thought was that he’d come on Lukin’s command, come for _her_ , come to take her prisoner and drag her screaming back to the Red Room.  But he wasn’t there for her.  Not to kill her or protect her.  He didn’t even seem to notice her.  His gray eyes were narrowed, icy and full of hatred, at Lukin where he stood behind his monster.  He raised another gun at Omega Red, firing the rifle in rapid succession to drive the monster back further.  He tossed that spent weapon and snatched another from beneath his cloak, a handgun he aimed at Lukin when a shot became possible.  Lukin shouted at Omega Red, and the monster shifted furiously, blocking the bullets with his own body.  That wasn’t much of a deterrent to Barnes.  He moved faster, taking cover from a swipe of the tentacles to the truck upon which he’d landed.  The strike cut the top of the vehicle clean off.  Barnes was back in a breath, a blur of black and silver as he _engaged_ the monster.

Natasha couldn’t help but stand and watch, shocked into a stasis.  This really was chaos.  Twists and turns and some sort of fate once again intervening on her behalf.  Omega Red launched one of his tentacles at Barnes, but he jerked in surprise when Barnes snapped up his metal arm and blocked the blow.  Frustrated and uncharacteristically uncertain, Omega Red turned back to her and roared.  He charged again, trying to knock Barnes aside and get to what he wanted.  But the assassin was faster, and when the tentacles careened toward Natasha’s wide-eyed form, he was _there,_ jumping in front of her.  They hit something strong, something hard that rang with a very distinctive and familiar sound.

Natasha dropped to her knees in alarm and terror, scrambling away as Barnes blocked the attack.  When she dared to raise her head, she saw he had Steve’s shield – _Steve’s shield!_ – and he was using it to push the monster back.  He still didn’t look at her, didn’t acknowledge her at all, his gun desperately seeking his own target.  She couldn’t believe it, and she didn’t understand, but she didn’t care.  She clambered back to her feet.  Seeing Steve’s shield, Captain America’s shield…  _“Don’t leave until I come for you.”_ Steve’s voice resounded through her head.  _“You hide.”_

There had to be some place to hide here, somewhere safe to tuck herself away while Barnes kept Omega Red busy.  The drones were destroyed – _they have to be destroyed!_ – so someone would come.  Stark or Rhodes.  Sharon and Maria.  _Someone_ would find her.

 _Steve will find me_.  She was suddenly certain, warm despite the cold rain and her ripped clothes and the terror rushing in her veins.  Seeing his shield, knowing his power in her veins and his children inside her…  She could _feel_ them.  And like he had before, she knew he would come for her.  It didn’t matter how.  It didn’t matter where he was or if he was hurt or if there were obstacles in his way.  She just knew he’d find her.

She scrambled away, legs pumping and heart pounding and feet shaking but sure on the wet road.  She wrapped her arm around her stomach and ran as fast as she could, heading toward one of the many emptying buildings.  This was what she could do to protect everyone now, herself and the twins included.  _Find someplace safe.  Hide._

So she ran.  And she hid.  Steve was coming, and she had to hold out until then.  He’d save her.  He’d save their babies.  He’d get them out of this.

He would.  _He’s coming._


	14. Chapter 14

Steve couldn’t keep going like this.  He was rapidly running out of energy; outrunning the Hulk was difficult, damn near impossible, even for him.  This horrible cat and mouse game they’d been playing for the last fifteen minutes had seriously worn him down.  Normally maintaining strenuous physical exertion wasn’t much of a burden to him, but staying ahead of the Hulk?  That was draining, body and mind.  The Hulk was almost as fast as he was, far stronger and far more resilient, and basically the only advantage Steve had was that he was smaller and perhaps a bit more agile.  Still, there’d been enough close calls over the last few minutes that if he really stopped and thought about it, he’d lose his nerve to keep going.  And he’d had to keep going, to keep the Hulk busy and away from Sam and everyone else.  Dodging those monstrous fists, leaping out of the way of stomping feet, avoiding lunges and strikes that came so close to killing him, _crushing_ him…  Honestly, he wasn’t sure how he was surviving this, and he didn’t have time to really wonder.  It was some sort of miracle he was still alive, and whatever luck was sustaining him wouldn’t last.  This wasn’t anything he could win, and eventually the beast would get him.

Therefore, when Thor hit the ground with a quaking thud between him and the Hulk as the beast lunged for him yet again, Steve’s heart nearly gave out in a mixture of relief so strong he could have cried and terror so strong he almost screamed.  He stumbled to the ground and scrambled through the mud and grass to crawl away.  Thor was there, Mjölnir screaming through the air and striking the Hulk in the jaw.  Steve swallowed his laboring heart.  Thor’s red, rain-slicked cape fluttered in the cold wind, and he looked over his shoulder at Steve.  “Go!  I have this!”

_Thor was there._

That meant no one was protecting Natasha.

The thought cut through the haze of panic and horror in his head.  He really didn’t have time to focus on it, however, because the Hulk screamed, fists clenched and eyes fiery, and batted Thor at least a hundred feet clear across the field.  Steve’s eyes widened as the Hulk thundered toward him again, mud and grass flying through the air under the impact of his feet.  He didn’t know what he’d done to anger the Hulk so much (wrong place, wrong time or a convenient target), but whatever it was, the beast was _intent_ on him.  He planted his hands into the wet earth, desperate for traction, for _something_ to help him, and somehow got his legs beneath him.  He jumped.   The fist that had been aimed for his back glanced his right hip instead, and pain lanceted down to his toes as he landed roughly on his side.  He felt the stitches in his shoulder tear and a blast of warmth as his wound started bleeding again.  He was so dazed from being hit, from how close he’d come to being killed yet again, that he wasn’t at all ready when the Hulk attacked.

The monster pounded the earth furiously, sending huge rivets of dirt and glass everywhere, before charging like a bull.  Steve was frozen with fright, not that it mattered.  There was nowhere he could go, and he couldn’t get there fast enough at any rate.  He raised an arm to protect his face and waited to die.

The flash of red in front of him shouldn’t have been so unexpected, but it was.  Thor was back, and he caught the Hulk’s pulverizing punch in his own hands.  “Steve, _run_ ,” he gasped, shaking with the strain.  He didn’t pause for Steve to follow his orders, shoving the Hulk back across the grass.  The Hulk hit the ground on his back.  Then he snorted and rolled to his feet, circling Thor.  There hadn’t been a spark of recognition, let alone Bruce himself, in those dark eyes since the insanity serum doused him.

Thor raised his right hand and his hammer came zooming through the rain like a bullet.  Once secure in his fingers, he raised it to the sky, and lightning burst from the thick rainclouds above.  Bolts of it crackled down his hammer to his arm, sizzling with power.  Steve watched wide-eyed; despite having fought side-by-side with Thor against the Chitauri, he’d never seen him like this, seemingly drawing all the power of the heavens down into himself.  “Doctor Banner,” he said softly, “I have no wish to fight you again like this.  I know your mind is corrupted, but I implore you to _think_ as you have before and realize we are your friends!”

That didn’t work.  The Hulk roared and came at Thor.  At least his attention was focused on the Asgardian now, because Steve managed to struggle to his feet and run without being chased for the first time in what felt like forever.  He glanced over his shoulder once to see the demigod and the beast trading feverish blows that would destroy anyone else.  Watching for only a second, he let his relief come in a huge, draining surge before gathering up his composure and sprinting back to the warehouse.  It wasn’t far, but the distance felt infinite.  He passed the Stark Industries helicopter, idle and somehow unharmed, and for a fleeting moment he entertained leaving to find Natasha.  _Thor’s here, so she’s alone.  She’s alone, and she could be–_

He couldn’t.  No matter how desperately he wanted to go to her and make certain she and the twins were safe, he had a duty to the team and the threats right in front of them.  He couldn’t assume she was in danger when he _knew_ Sam was.  He didn’t have the slightest idea of what was going on.  He’d spent the last fifteen minutes trying to keep the Hulk busy while not getting himself killed.  He wasn’t sure if Sam was okay or if he was lost in the insanity serum, too.  He didn’t know what had happened to the HYDRA drones; he’d heard something about them launching from an airport nearby and something more about Tony going to stop them.  He didn’t know if they’d reached the city, if Iron Man had been able to thwart them, if – he didn’t know _anything._

_Find Sam._

“Sam!” Steve shouted when he burst into the broken remains of the warehouse complex.  He stopped in the middle of the room, glancing around wildly.  He hadn’t realized when he’d been running for his life how destroyed the place was.  An entire section of the main area where they’d fought the HYDRA soldiers was simply gone, collapsed and reduced to a huge pile of rubble by the Hulk’s rampage.  His eyes settled on it.  _Please let him not be under that…_   “Sam?  Sam!”  Nothing.  Steve didn’t know where to turn, so he didn’t turn at all, listening intently.  Desperate fear arced over him until he couldn’t hardly stand to be still.  “Sam!  Can you hear me?  Where are you?”

There was a low groan, rough with pain and suffering.  It wasn’t coming from the wreckage.  Steve jolted forward, shoving debris out of his path, jumping over dead soldiers.  “Sam, answer me!  Tell me where you are!”

“Go ’way,” came a whimper.  That was Sam’s voice, but it was unlike Steve had ever heard before.  It was hoarse and shaking.  Steve’s keen ears immediately localized it in the rear of the room.  He headed that way, but the minute he got close, Sam desperately yelled, “Get back!  Get _the fuck_ back!”  Steve slowed his steps but didn’t stop or turn away.  He kept looking, shoving aside a broken forklift and damaged chunks of the wall and ceiling.  Finally he found Sam tucked into the shadowy corner of the room, curled in on himself and shaking violently.  Steve couldn’t see him entirely so he couldn’t tell if anything else was wrong.  Sam’s eyes immediately shot to Steve, and they were filled with rage.  Steve knew that look.  He’d seen it on the Red Guardian, on Brushov’s men.  On Natasha.  He could tell right away, though, that Sam wasn’t completely lost in the hellish haze of madness created by the insanity serum.  Sam was recognizing him, focusing and cognizant, and, most of all, he was holding himself back.  _Thank God._ The effects were still there, though, and they were terrible.  “Don’t you ever fucking listen?” Sam snapped venomously.  “Huh?  To anyone?  I tell you shit over and over again, and you _never_ listen!”

“Nope,” Steve said softly, coming closer despite Sam’s threatening glower.  “Let me help you.”

“Get away!  God, I am sick and tired of all of this bullshit!”

Steve winced, shame and hurt sharp in his heart.  “Tell you what,” he said softly after a moment of tense quiet.  “When all of this is over, you go home to DC and sleep, okay?  I won’t show up at your door.  I promise.”  Sam grunted.  “You can rest.  Go back to not takin’ orders from anyone.  The simple life, huh?  Ask that looker from the VA out.”

Sam barked out a rough, humorless laugh.  “You just want me gone because – ’cause you know you can’t ever repay me for all this, Rogers.”

Steve managed a weak smile.  “Maybe.”  Sam heaved a sob, shuddering and turning more into the shadows.  Steve took a tentative step closer.  “You gonna come here so I can get you somewhere safe?”  He risked another step but stopped instantly when Sam whirled and whipped out a gun he was holding in the hand Steve hadn’t been able to see.  Steve stopped dead in his tracks, eyes widening.  Sam wouldn’t have posed much of a threat to him before even crazy with aggression, but this…  The last time someone under the influence of the insanity serum had had a gun on him, he’d been shot in the heart.  “Whoa.  Okay, okay.”  He managed to keep his voice level as he slowly backed away.  “Listenin’ real hard now.”

Thankfully, even as lost in rage and covered in sweat and physically suffering as he was, Sam seemed to realize where he was and what he was doing.  “Oh, hell,” he moaned, and he dropped the gun before Steve even had to tell him to put it down.  He closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around his stomach like he was going to be sick.  “Christ.  First gettin’ drained by Dracula and now this…  This stuff is awful.”

Steve rushed to the corner to catch Sam as he fell.  “I know.”  He crouched with him and took the gun from the floor where Sam had dropped it, sliding it into his jeans before steadying his friend.  “I’m gonna get you out of here.  Hold on.”  He looped one of Sam’s arms around his neck and shuffled away from the corner.  “Just hold on.”

Sam didn’t answer, literally soaked with perspiration and trembling.  Steve saw a vein in his neck pounding too hard and too fast.  He needed medical attention.  Gritting his teeth, he hauled Sam tighter against him and took all of his weight.  “You carry me out of here and I am so done with you,” Sam muttered hazily.  Steve gave a hoarse chuckle at that, moving faster toward the gaping hole in the warehouse that would lead them outside.

As they passed that huge pile of wreckage, there was a raspy whisper.  “Captain America.”

Steve turned, eyes narrowing at the soft sound.  He looked down into the shadowy mess.  Rain had puddled in the wreckage, dripping down from a huge rent in the ceiling.  Near the edge, crushed under a huge beam, was Malik.  Most of the face paint had washed off, leaving graying flesh and dying eyes.  He was mortally wounded; the red paint was mixing with red blood in the water around him.  “It’s over, Malik,” Steve said softly, firmly.

The man actually smiled.  It was gruesome, crimson teeth and eyes that still glimmered with smugness despite the fact he was bleeding out all over the warehouse floor.  “It will never be over,” he retorted.  Each breath was a wet gurgle, but he kept talking, oddly serene at his own end.  “Never.  You will never be free.  Not you.  Not the people who love.  Not your woman.  Not your children.”

Steve tried not to show how much that threat frightened him, now more than ever before.  “I’ll never stop fighting,” he promised.

Malik closed his eyes.  “So fight.  It doesn’t matter.  Today, tomorrow…  This year.  Next year.  Fifty years from now…  HYDRA lives forever.  And you will not.  Mark my words, Captain.  The day will come where you will fall.”  That smile grew broader, more confident, chillingly so.  “Sooner than you think, the day will come where you _will_ die.”

Steve found he couldn’t breathe.  He’d been threatened by HYDRA _many_ times before, by evil men with dark intentions, by the Red Skull and his minions and Pierce and Rumlow, and he’d never been terribly fazed.  But this…  Somehow it felt to be more.  That was strange considering this man was a _fake_ in every sense of the word.  He wasn’t the Red Skull.  This wasn’t even HYDRA anymore, at least not HYDRA as it had been when he’d fought them during the war.  Still, it was unsettling for reasons he couldn’t explain because it felt… _prophetic_.  He stood there, watching as the last breath fled Malik’s white lips and as the last light disappeared from his eyes.

“Yeah, well, you first,” Sam groaned, drawing Steve’s attention.  “Steve, let’s go.  Not feelin’ so hot.”

Sam’s weight was comforting, _grounding_ , against him, and the desperation in his voice was a stark reminder of what was happening outside.  He turned and walked quickly out of the warehouse.  Outside it was raining harder, a cold, miserable shower that plastered their clothes to their skin.  Across the field, Thor was still battling the Hulk.  Loudly.  Sam shivered as he caught sight of it.  “God,” he moaned.

“Come on,” Steve said, pulling him toward the helicopter.  When they got there, though, the sound of something very fast cutting through the upper atmosphere blasted over the field.  A breath later, Iron Man landed beside Thor, carrying a huge case of something which he set down.  He turned and unleashed a round of repulsor shots at the Hulk.  Steve couldn’t see more because another suit of armor slammed down into the ground in front of them, landing on one knee.  It rose to its full height, and for a moment, Steve couldn’t make sense of the blue, red, and silver plating.  Tony’s all-American twin?  Then he recalled the reports from the Mandarin incident.  Iron Patriot.

“Captain Rogers,” the armor said.  “Colonel James Rhodes.  Nice to finally meet you.”

It was an odd time for an introduction if there ever was one.  And Sam didn’t take well to it.  He flinched and scrambled away, the flush of insanity all over his wet face, and his eyes were brimming with equal parts anger and terror.  “Easy, Sam,” Steve said softly, tightening his grip on the other man.  “Easy!  Easy!  Back off!”

“Sorry for this,” Rhodes said, and in a blur of blue he rushed forward and pinned Sam against Steve.  Sam screamed and struggled, but he was no match for Iron Patriot and Captain America.  Rhodes jabbed a needle into Sam’s arm and pressed the plunger.

Steve’s eyes widened.  “What the hell are you doing?”

“Hold him,” Rhodes ordered, yanking the syringe free and tossing it.  “It’s the cure to the serum, but everyone else who’s had it so far hasn’t reacted too well at first.”  The warning came not a moment too soon, because Sam went rigid with a cry and something like a convulsion came on the tail of it.  Steve gently supported him, extremely careful of his strength as Sam writhed in his arms.  Thankfully, it didn’t last more than a couple of minutes, and when it was over, Sam was gasping and groaning and holding onto them both as if his life depended on it.

“Sam?” Steve asked in a hushed voice that was dripping with concern.  “You with us?”

Sam shuddered, grimacing and breathing heavily.  He managed to raise his head after another long moment of panting, and when he did, Steve saw his eyes were much clearer.  That haze of madness was gone, leaving behind the same friendly, brown orbs with which he’d grown so familiar.  Sam wiped a quivering hand down his face, and then he stared at his own fingers, like he was seeing clearly again.  “Holy shit,” he whispered.  “God…”

“Better?” Rhodes asked.

Sam looked surprised.  “Yeah.  Like my head’s clearin’.  What–”

There was a frustrated roar from behind them.  Iron Man had more of the needles, but it was clear they weren’t thick enough to pierce the Hulk’s skin.  Stark was fumbling in that case for a weapon, a long spear of some sort.  “Rhodey!” he called.

Rhodes nodded, but before he was more than a step away, he said, “Romanoff’s in trouble.  We destroyed those drones, but that monster thing was chasing her.”  Steve’s blood turned to ice.  “Believe me, I did _not_ want to leave her but she ordered me to get this cure here and–”

“Goddamn it, Rhodes!” Tony snapped, fumbling to load the spear with the cure for the insanity serum.  “Thor, can you hold him?  Hold him!”

 “Where?”  Steve grabbed Iron Patriot’s vambrace with enough strength and insistence to dent the metal plating.  _“Where?”_

“Times Square!” Rhodes answered before he rocketed across the field to help Tony.

Sam was unsteady on his feet as all of his support suddenly vanished.  “Steve, what–”  But Steve was already running to the helicopter.  He snatched the door and yanked it open.  “Steve!  Steve, wait!”  There was no waiting.  He jumped inside and pushed his way into the cockpit.  He’d never flown anything like this, but he’d damn well figure it out.  He saw the switches Tony had used before to shut the chopper down and he flipped them the other way.  “Get in the co-pilot’s seat!” Sam snapped from behind him.  “I’ll fly!”

Steve glanced over his shoulder as he slid into the co-pilot’s chair.  Sam was severely unsteady, obviously assailed with dizziness and probably other unpleasant side-effects from either the insanity serum or its antidote.  He grabbed the walls and the seats in the fuselage for support as he clambered to the cockpit.  “Can you–”

“Don’t,” Sam warned sharply.  He sat in the pilot’s seat and took over switching everything on with shaking hands.  “I’m fine.  Let’s do this.”

A second later, the helicopter was in the air again.  They were flying toward the city.  This was a Stark Industries chopper, so they were moving fast, but it wasn’t fast enough.  Every second they spent getting there was torturous, and Steve could hardly make himself breathe or think or do anything other than worry.  Terror clenched his heart.  _Omega Red’s after her.  I’m not there.  Oh, God, please keep her safe.  Please please please–_

“That’s not good.”  Sam was flying low, probably illegally so, over Midtown.  There was a path of destruction, smoke and burning cars and smashed buildings, from Stark Tower up 42nd Street, down 6th Avenue, and turning again at 46th Street.  There the damage was more extensive.  Steve could see the remains of a few fighter jets burning on the road, some smashed into buildings.  There were emergency vehicles everywhere, police, fire, and EMTs treating injured civilians.  A huge section of 46th Street and its surrounding blocks was cordoned off further westward.  The streets there were wet with red.  One of the drones had clearly delivered its payload of the insanity serum, but the area and the unfortunate victims already looked well contained, and men with gas masks and hazmat suits were working to help.

“Steve, look,” Sam said.

Steve tore his eyes back to Times Square.  There was damage everywhere, evidence of a massive fight.  People were still being evacuated.  It was mass hysteria.  The reason why was clear.  Omega Red was near One Times Square fighting… _someone._   He couldn’t see who, and there was no time to find out.  It wasn’t Natasha, and it wasn’t one of the Avengers.  He breathed a silent word of thanks to whoever was keeping the monster busy.  “Sam, drop down as low as you can get,” Steve ordered.  Sam turned to question him, but he was already moving to the back of the chopper.

“God, this is crazy,” Sam whispered, flipping a few switches on the console and turning the flight stick to circle the area again and descend as they did so.  The chopper tipped through the tight turn, and Steve pushed open the rear door again.  “Steve!”

“I have to find her!”

“I know!”  Their words could hardly be heard over the rush of wind, the screams below, and the beating of the rotors.  “Be careful!  I’m gonna set down somewhere and come with help!”

Steve nodded and jumped.  He was maybe a hundred feet from the ground.  He rolled when he hit in the middle of the mess, smoothly rising and running.  Once he was in the center of Times Square, he stopped and turned around frantically.  Some of the buildings were damaged and smoking, but most were intact.  Natasha wouldn’t have fought Omega Red, not by herself and not unless there was no other choice.  She was hiding somewhere.  She had to be.  “Natasha!”  There was no way his voice could be heard over the noise.  _“_ Where are you?  _Natasha!”_  There was no way he could hear her answer either, not even with the serum aiding him.  And there was no way he could search all of these buildings and nooks and streets…  _She’d go someplace big with a lot of interior hiding places, someplace with cover but with room to fight…_  He scanned the major stores around the center of Times Square.  Even limiting the search to that was too much.

Frantic, he took the arm of a passing civilian.  “Have you seen a woman with red hair?”  His question was ignored.  _Which of the probably thousands here?_   He ignored his mind’s frustrated comment and tried someone else.  And another person.  And another.  No one answered, everyone too panic-stricken and desperate to save themselves.  The odds of anyone having seen Natasha in this chaos were dismally low, and he knew it.  Disheartened and veritably pulsing with mounting panic, he looked around again and again, mouth open with panting breaths and eyes wide and heart thundering.

Across the area, Omega Red screamed.  The sound rapidly got louder and louder, and Steve whirled just in time to see the beast charging toward him.  His face was a picture of horror, covered in rain and sweat, red eyes tight with rage.  He was completely uncontrollable, like he’d caught scent of Steve’s blood on the air.  He probably had.  And he rammed Steve before he even had a chance to move.

Steve cried out, hitting the street hard on his back, his shirt and skin ripping and burning as he was slammed across the unforgiving pavement.  He almost lost consciousness with the weight pushing him down, but he didn’t.  He fought, shoving back with all of his strength, wedging his knee up between him and the beast.  But it wasn’t enough.  Omega Red slavered all over him, suffering with full-body shudders.  He was shaking like an addict going through withdrawal, the red of his eyes only a rim around black pupils blown huge.  Steve could feel how desperately he wanted to taste his blood, his life, but the monster stopped himself.  He was holding back, and it wasn’t only because draining Steve had hurt before.  Omega Red climbed off of him but didn’t let him up, didn’t allow him one inch of advantage.  The tentacles came down and one of them knocked his fists away before lifting him by his right wrist.  Steve howled in anger, kicking uselessly, but Omega Red kept him too far away for his feet to strike.  The other tentacle flew up and wrapped around his neck, hot and horrible.  It was so tight, crushing his windpipe until he could hardly breathe.  He kept struggling; his right hand was free again, and he had both of them grabbing the coils around his throat no matter how it burned, pulling and pulling and _pulling_.  But even with all his strength behind it, they weren’t loosening, and Omega Red lifted him high into the air in the center of Times Square.

Steve couldn’t get enough air into his lungs to scream or fight or even think.  The world was a blur of rain and clouds and bright lights around him, but blackness was coming closer, dancing on the edges of his vision.  It took his oxygen-deprived brain a seeming eternity to realize Omega Red wasn’t killing him.  It would take _nothing_ to strangle him completely, to break his neck, to _tear him apart_.  He was hanging dozens of feet in the air, completely helpless and at the beast’s mercy, but the bastard made no move to end his life or take what he wanted.  The other tentacle came up, undulating in front of Steve, _waving_ , and then the end shifted its shape into the sharp point again.  That point stretched into a shimmering blade, as long as a knife and then a sword, and that came to rest at his heaving midriff.  Steve stopped struggling, choked so severely that his muscles were growing sluggish and unresponsive, and he was dangerously close to that razor-sharp edge that he didn’t dare do anything to bring his body any closer.  The tentacle didn’t stab; it just hung there, threatening.  Waiting.

His brain finally functioned enough to realize what Omega Red was doing, restraining him like this, dangling and strangled with a knife poised to stab him.  He was holding Black Widow’s mate up as bait to lure her out.

“You want him dead?” Omega Red roared.  His cry seemed to shake all of the buildings surrounding them.  People were screaming, running away.  Steve forced himself to struggle anew, even as that blade cut a burning line across his upper abdomen.  “Do you?  Come out!  Come out now!”

Steve kicked and pulled.  The coil of carbonadium around his neck tightened even more in a clear warning.  He didn’t heed it.  “You want him _dead?_ ” the monster screamed again.  His voice was tinged with desperation, with so much frustration, that Steve knew if Natasha didn’t emerge in the next few minutes, Omega Red would probably kill him just to kill _something._   “Come here!  Come!  I’ll kill him!  I’ll–”

“Put him down.”

Steve’s heart broke.  _No, Nat.  Please…_   Natasha emerged from the humongous toy store on the corner.  Omega Red turned, his red eyes narrowing as he spotted his prey coming closer.  Natasha was disheveled, missing her sweatshirt and half her hair down from her ponytail.  There was blood on her – _please not hers_ – and her face was pale.  A glint of silver shone wetly atop her drenched tank tops.  His dog tags.  It took everything he had, but he choked out, “Natasha…  Run!”

She didn’t.  Her eyes didn’t even go to him.  Instead, she stared coolly at Omega Red, unarmed but undaunted.  “Put him down,” she ordered again.  “Do it.”  She had no leverage, _nothing_ to force this huge, unbeatable monster to comply.  Steve squirmed uselessly, trying to read her face, to understand.  “Do it or you will never find me.  You’ll never have me.  I can outrun you forever, and I will.  Do you want that?”

“You lie,” Omega Red hissed.

“I’m Black Widow.  I’ve told a lot of lies, lived a life of them, but this is one hard and fast truth.”  Natasha cocked an eyebrow.  She was deadly, donning that mask Steve had seen her wear countless times to manipulate contacts and pressure criminals.  She was so sure, so beautiful, so powerful.  “If you don’t let him go, I will run, and you will never, _ever_ find me again.”

The monster hesitated.  He screamed, _“You lie!”_

Natasha stayed completely calm.  “I’ve eluded you this far.  For days.  Weeks.”  The monster shook with want.  “You want to risk it?”  She tipped her head slightly.  “How much more can you take, Arkady?”

Omega Red glared at her, but it was more than obvious he was unsettled.  Natasha had gotten through to him, was actually making him _think_ about negotiating in this crazy hostage negotiation.  He was truly concerned about her threat, though that hardly seemed rational.  There was no way she could outrun Omega Red and Lukin, at least not forever, although the way she said it, with so much _certainty_ , even Steve believed she could and would.  She was a master manipulator, preying on insecurities and desires and vulnerabilities.  And she was manipulating him, dangling exactly what he wanted above everything else right in front of him as he was trying to do her only she was making him take it.

With a growl, Omega Red lowered Steve.  He did it so slowly, and that carbonadium sword stayed lightly cutting into his captive’s belly as he did.  Steve grimaced, stilling his struggles anew at the pain, as he was held in front of Natasha.  The monster was testing her, trying to call her bluff, get some reaction out of her to prove her threat was a lie or improbable.  She was impassive, uncaring, her face stony and patient.  Omega Red was anything but, baleful and quivering.  Steve stared at Natasha, praying like he’d never prayed before, but she didn’t even glance at him.  And she did nothing when the monster threw him across Times Square.

Steve struck a car hard enough that the world faded out.  It was only for a second or two, but when he came back to it, he blinked hazily at a blur of black and silver.  Shoulder-length messy brown hair.  _Bucky?_   But he couldn’t spare much of a thought on that.  Omega Red was howling almost continually, like endless thunder.  Steve got his eyes to focus, and when he did, he saw the monster tear into the toy store from which Natasha had exited.  He pushed himself up and staggered into a run, heading back across Times Square.  The store’s colorful sign was a rainbow blur above him as he charged through the glass doors.  The place was _massive_ ; the entrance was on the second floor, and it was vacuous, bright, and teeming with displays.  It looked evacuated, bags dropped, things tipped over and spilled.  There were two sets of escalators that led up and down to other floors, and in the center of the foyer was a great, open space where one could look above and below.  Heading back there were rows and rows, fancy and expensive displays of the newest attractions, games, and toys.  The sheer amount of color and light and things at which to look was overwhelming.

Omega Red was clambering up the down escalator.  Steve caught a flash of red on the top floor.  _Nat._   He ran, jumping up onto the escalator, dodging debris that the monster was throwing down as he scrambled toward Natasha.  She was running across the third floor, ducking as Omega Red whipped his tentacles after her.  The monster seemed less coordinated, less capable somehow, like the flaws in the serum used to create him were mounting the longer he went without getting what he needed.  He staggered slightly, not enough to slow but enough that Steve noticed.  He was violently trembling, almost falling apart.  Steve gritted his teeth, forcing all the speed and strength he could out of himself.  One long stride and then a jump and he was on the railing of the floor above.  Omega Red was there to his left, smashing everything he touched in order to get himself up.  He spotted Steve and roared again.  Undaunted, Steve launched himself onto the monster’s back.  He wrapped his right arm around Omega Red’s neck, grabbing his wrist with his other hand and pulling tight.  “Let’s see how you like it,” he snapped, choking the monster harder and harder.  He clenched his thighs to hold on while the beast bucked wildly, desperate to dislodge Steve and furiously struggling.  His tentacles slashed through the air, cutting straight through the third floor, punching holes and destroying shelves around them.  Stuffed animals and dolls tumbled down to the bottom of the central area.  Natasha jumped aside as racks toppled over, watching with worried eyes at the damage all around her.  Steve didn’t let up, not for a second.  “Nat, run!  _Run!”_

She didn’t.  She came back to the railing, darting around the cracks forming in the tile of the third floor as it destabilized.  Steve ducked, avoiding Omega Red’s reaching fingers.  The beast was sacrificing his hold on the crumbling railing to grab for him, and it was proving costly.  The monster flailed, strangled, suffering.  A loud crack resounded.  The floor was giving way.  “Steve!” Natasha cried, reaching for him.  “Steve!”

Steve released his choke hold.  He jabbed his foot into the monster’s ribs for leverage, reached into the back of his jeans, and grabbed the gun.  He unloaded the entire magazine into Omega Red’s back, and that was enough to disrupt his grip entirely.  He let go just as the floor came apart.  Steve jumped, pushing the monster down, and soared toward Natasha.

She grabbed his hand, her face fracturing in pain as she stopped his fall.  He swung inward, his chest hitting the ragged end of the floor where tile and concrete had once been.  Her fingers tangled in his jacket, pulling and _pulling_ , and he was safely on the remains of the second floor a breath later.  Omega Red wailed in anger as he tumbled to the bottom, screaming past the second floor and down to the first.

Steve collapsed atop Natasha, shuddering in relief.  She curled herself into him, her rushed breaths matching his as she clung to him.  They couldn’t spare a moment to rest.  They couldn’t–

The sound of the tentacles whizzing through the air was horrific and loud.  Steve pushed himself up but not in time to do anything as the floor was _yanked_ out beneath them.  The awful feeling of weightlessness crawled over them both.  Then Steve snatched Natasha close to himself and rolled, putting his back to the floor as they fell.  It seemed to take forever, tumbling down to the first floor with debris flying all around them.  But it didn’t last more than a second, and they hit hard.  Steve tightened his grip on her, tucking her to his chest and protecting her with his own body.  Agony rushed over him.  It was crippling but not crippling enough to stop him, and he rolled as he saw dark blobs of toys and boxes and wreckage falling toward them.  He moved without thought, scrambling away with Natasha in his arms and against his chest.  Scrambling right into Omega Red.

Steve got to his feet and backed away, pushing Natasha behind him.  She was stiff with terror, stumbling.  Omega Red smiled hideously at them.  He was shaking, bloody.  “Mine,” he snarled breathlessly, his tentacles twitching spastically.  “Mine.  Mine.  Mine!”

There was no time to do anything.  The tentacles shot forward.  They couldn’t get to Natasha without going through Steve, and they tried, angling for the gaps around Steve’s body.  He didn’t let them.  He turned, throwing himself in the way.  The tentacles retracted, shivering and shuddering with a whirring sound.  Steve breathed heavily, glaring at the beast.  The beast glared back but retreated, trying to gauge the situation and find a way to attack.  Omega Red was afraid, as crazy as that was.  Afraid of _him_.  _Wanting him so badly, but so afraid._

And then he realized what he had to do.  Running wasn’t the answer.  Hiding wasn’t the answer.  It never had been.  Natasha hadn’t.  She’d been strong enough to come out and face the monster the best way she knew how.  He could do the same.  Captain America didn’t run and didn’t hide.  Stark was right.  It really was about good versus evil.  His light versus the monster’s darkness.  The alpha and the omega.  The beginning and the end.

Steve drew a deep breath.  He straightened, rubbing his hand across the bleeding wound on his stomach.  “Still think I taste good?” he taunted, shoving his reddened palm forward.  Omega Red’s eyes widened and he practically trembled with need.  Steve forced himself to stay calm, even as his skin crawled.  “Are you hungry?  You want to eat?”  The blood dripped off Steve’s fingers onto the floor, one droplet at a time.  Steve watched Omega Red’s face as they splashed down, watched that tantalize and antagonize him.  Omega Red had chased Natasha across the world for this.  Was his hunger worse than his restraint?  Was he willing to risk his life to stop it?  Was he willing to kill himself to get what he wanted?  Steve was willing to bet he was.  “You want this?”

A harsh call came from above.  “Take it!”  It was Lukin, standing at the entrance to the store and looking down.  He was bleeding, limping, battered, but still very much in charge.  His eyes flashed as he stalked to the escalator down, turning a gun down on the Avengers below.  “Do it!  Do you hear me?”  Omega Red hissed, circling them, still trying to find a way to attack.  He was losing more and more patience, more and more control.  “You were made to be stronger than him, Arkady!” Lukin yelled.  _“Kill him now!_ ”

Omega Red snapped.  The tentacles shot forward again, this time for Steve.  Steve let them take him, let that awful heat rush over him.  He was terrified, but he didn’t fight.  Maybe this was the only way.  The only way he could kill this evil.  Lukin was wrong.  _He was stronger._   That horrible feeling came again as the tentacles coiled around him.  Pain.  Darkness.  _So much of it._   It was like inky tendrils were reaching inside him, everywhere, invading every part of him, his skin and muscles and bones and organs, down to his cells, and trying to _pull_.  Pull his life, his energy, his soul.  It was almost overwhelming, how cold and vile it was, but he was ready for it this time, and he _pushed back_.

The monster let him go with a gasp of pain.  He hit the floor.  It was hard to get himself back at first, but he did, lungs breathing and heart beating and blood rushing _hot_ in his veins.  Natasha was there, taking his upper body in her arms.  Omega Red panted, shaking madly in a war between satisfaction and pain.  Rage won over both those things.  “Nat, go,” Steve gasped, kicking back across the floor and pushing her with him.

“I’m not leaving you!” she said in his ear.

“If he wants to feed, I’m going to give him something to eat,” Steve returned, glancing over his shoulder at her.  He gave her half a knowing grin.  “Go, love.  Please.”

He couldn’t see if she listened.  Omega Red lost all of his restraint, whatever little of it remained.  He lunged at Steve, and Steve dove to the side.  He scrambled to his feet, not running away, but running _back_ at him just as Natasha had before.  He kicked forward, catching the monster in the chest and actually knocking him down.  Steve whirled, driving, jumping to slam his fist into Omega Red’s face.  His head cracked to the side, but he was quick to recover, snatching Steve with his fist and slamming him into the floor hard enough to crack it.  Steve tasted blood, reeling with the pain for a moment, before shoving up.  He caught the fist coming at him, and for a moment it was a contest of strengths.  Omega Red had more, of course, but it didn’t matter.  Steve reached for the tentacle ghosting uncertainly against his side, poised to attack once the need overcame the memory of pain.  The burn of touching it was awful, but _he was stronger._   When he felt the darkness coming again, he didn’t let it frighten him, no matter how much it hurt.  He pushed again, a rallying cry that went across every part of him just as that sucking blackness was clawing at him, and when he surged forward this time, he realized something.  That darkness was Rossovich, amplified by the serum that made him.  And he could feel it because the connection went both ways.  As much as Omega Red could reach into him, he could reach _back_.

Somebody had said something about that.  The carbonadium was a bridge, the medium through which one life could touch another.  So he swallowed the scream building in his throat and reached through that connection and stood strong against the onslaught.  When the digging pull of Omega Red’s hunger faded, he pushed him again.

_Opposites.  Antithesis.  Dark and light.  Alpha and omega._

_Beginning and end._

Omega Red keened and let him go.  Steve was shaking himself, but the rush of having fought back was exhilarating, and the thrill of it empowered him to get up, to strike with a fist, to drive the beast away from him.  He was fast.  The monster looked horrified, sluggishly struggling to keep up, and Steve landed blow after blow against him.  However, the rage returned, powering the beast again, and he backhanded Steve hard enough that he flew across the floor and landed flat on his back again.  The agony returned, this time mixed with nightmare and memory.  The Red Guardian fighting him.  Breaking him.  The Winter Soldier doing the same.  He felt jumbled up and lost again.  Distantly he heard Natasha screaming his name, ordering him to get up.  Other voices, too.  Sam, he thought.  Sam trying to keep Natasha safe.  And Bucky.  _Bucky._

The metal arm shone even in the shadows as the Winter Soldier jumped down from above.  He had Lukin by the scruff of his neck, and he shoved him unceremoniously and roughly to the floor as he ran like a streak of shadow toward Omega Red.  Guns were blaring, distant pops of thunder, as he fought, dodging the whirl of tentacles, of outrageously muscled arms, of kicking feet and ripping hands.  Bucky was fast, so strong, dark and ruthless.  And he was fighting with something.  Steve’s eyes finally focused again.  The thing in Bucky’s hand…  A circle.  A shape.  A star.

His shield.

The tentacles slammed into the vibranium, loud enough to echo through the store.  Between the shield and the metal arm, Bucky was blocking everything Omega Red threw at him, and the beast was quickly losing his patience.  When Omega Red’s tentacle finally landed a strike, finally curled around Bucky’s flesh and blood arm, that sickly blue light glowed down it, and Bucky jerked back in pain.

So did Omega Red.

Everything seemed impossibly still with surprise.  Then Steve understood.  The dossier on the Winter Soldier.  Zola’s experiments with the Red Skull’s blood.  Bucky was fused with some version of Erskine’s serum.  _The alpha serum._

Steve lunged to his feet and thundered back into the fray.  He launched himself at Omega Red’s side, catching another of the tentacles.  It hurt horribly, but he pulled the tentacle away from Bucky, forcing himself to keep his hands firm on it even as the poison flooded him again.  He gritted his teeth, throwing his own energy across the tentacle.  Omega Red actually screamed in pain, letting go of Bucky involuntarily.  The monster came at him again with his hand, grabbing Bucky’s cybernetic arm and yanking with dangerous force like he wanted to rip it away.  Bucky wailed, falling to the floor, and Steve’s heart clenched in anger.  He caught Bucky’s eyes, caught them like he always had before at home in Brooklyn or during the war and just _understood_.  Bucky threw his shield to him, sacrificing the only protection he had now, and Steve caught it.

The feel of finally having it back in his hands was empowering in a way he could never have imagined.  He’d been so lost without it, so hurt and low, and holding it again, sliding it quickly onto his left arm, was overwhelmingly comforting.  But then Bucky screamed again, the other tentacle around his midsection now and glowing furiously white as Omega Red drained him.  Steve tightened his hold on the tentacle he had, running along its length to where it entered the beast’s arm.  Omega Red was so intent on overcoming the pain in trying to take Bucky’s life that he didn’t notice Steve until it was too late.  He slid on the floor between Omega Red’s legs, turned, and rammed the edge of his shield as hard as he could into the place where the carbonadium met the monster’s arm.  One strike dented the joint.  Another broke through it.  And a third cut the tentacle clean away.

The beast’s rage was terrifying.  He howled and let go of Bucky, throwing him violently.  Steve scrambled to escape, but he couldn’t.  Omega Red grabbed him, getting him by the throat, squeezing and crushing again until he couldn’t breathe.  His shield slid from his arm as he struggled.  Nothing did any good, the monster lifting him in the air again.  Something stabbed into his right side above his hip, but he couldn’t get the air into his lungs to scream.  Through darkening vision, he saw the blood rolling down the other tentacle where it was embedded in him.  He sacrificed a hold on the hand around his throat to wrap shaking fingers around the thing and pull, frantically trying to prevent it from going any deeper into his body.  “You can’t stop me,” Omega Red hissed, his face right in front of Steve’s.  Steve gagged and choked, kicking but his shoes couldn’t reach the ground for purchase.  Panic thrummed in his veins.  “I’ll drink you dry, and when I’m through, I’ll take her and the life inside her and I’ll _never_ be hungry again.”  The monster smiled, but it was full of madness, with desperation.  “You still taste good.  You taste like _power._   The power they promised me.”  Steve sputtered, pulling as hard as he could at the tentacle stabbing into his flank, but it was sliding deeper, excruciatingly slowly.  And the huge fingers around his neck tightened and tightened, like the beast was feeling Steve’s heart pound and strain under his crushing grip and loving the sensation.  “Your life.  It’s _mine_.”     

“Never,” Steve gasped out, but then the pain stole the rest of his voice in a cry.

“I am the alpha and the omega.”  The beast’s eyes were dark and hungry, _so_ hungry.  “The beginning and the end.”

And Omega Red drained him.

This was it.  If he let go here, _failed_ here, he was going to die.  He was going to die and there would be no one to protect Natasha, to protect their children, and Erskine’s legacy would at long last and despite all of his efforts become part of HYDRA’s future.  But it was too much, and he knew it immediately.  Omega Red dug _deeper_ , reaching into his body and mind and heart with all the force he could, a vicious, clawing thing that scraped inside and pulled at everything he was.  He couldn’t fight this time.  He was already worn, already so tired and hurt, and he wasn’t prepared for the sheer onslaught of evil coursing throughout his body.  Still, he tried.  Feebly he did.  He could feel Omega Red’s heart beating, even as his slowed.  Lungs breathing harsh and fast, even as his stopped.  Blood, fiery and thin, even as his was thickening and cooling.  He could _feel_ what Omega Red felt, how _good_ this was but how very much it hurt, how vile and beautiful and unsustainable.  They were almost one, but not quite, teetering on the edge.  Who was dominant.  Who would die first.  That was the only question that mattered.  Good versus evil.  Light and dark.  Who was _stronger_.

It wasn’t him.  Steve felt the life leave his body in a rush as the serum was overwhelmed.  Poison entered his cells, taking their energy in a flood of agony, and he couldn’t stop it now.  He couldn’t fight.  He couldn’t see.  He couldn’t breathe or think or feel anymore.  He couldn’t…  Couldn’t…

_“Fight, Stevie.”_

Screaming.

_“Come on.  Get back up.”_

The sound grew desperate, more and more anguished.

_“He’s just another bully.  And you’ve got him on the ropes.”_

It wasn’t him screaming.  It was Omega Red.

 _“You’re Captain America.  Always have been.  Always will be.  Now_ fight. _”_

Steve opened his eyes.  Strength flooded back over him.  Bucky was _there_ , right at his side, his flesh and blood hand tight on the tentacle in his body and pulling.  Between both of them, they managed to get it out of Steve.  Omega Red recoiled, horror bright in his eyes and twisting his disgusting face.  The two of them together was too much, and the monster howled at the pain, at the poison he was stupidly sucking into his body.  Steve’s life.  Bucky’s.  It was _too much_ , and he was trying to stop it, to get away.

The hand around Steve’s neck disappeared, and he dropped to the floor.  The first breath of air into his lungs was fresh, rejuvenating, and he gasped and sucked it in, basking in the feeling of purity pouring back over his body.  He didn’t let go of the tentacle, even as Omega Red tried to yank it free.  He got both hands on it, bodily dragging the beast back.  Bucky did, too.  And he felt the monster on the other side of the bridge, struggling to shut this down, to control it and stop the flood of toxic _life_ into his body, but it was too late.  The connection stayed strong because Steve was strong.  Bucky was strong.  _They were strong together._

Omega Red screamed and screamed.  His skin was flushing, turning from gray to healthy pink to bright crimson as the power from Erskine’s serum flooded his body.  He fell down, landing on his back, squirming uselessly.  His voice failed him.  His huge form and powerful muscles failed him.  His evil failed him.  And his hunger did him in.  Even as foolish as it was, he was still sucking, drinking, exactly like an addict who simply couldn’t stop.  Self-destructive.  He was _destroying himself._

Bucky had to let go.  It was too much for him and he dropped to his knees.  But Steve powered on, sliding his hands through the burn, up the length of the tentacle as he staggered closer.  He stood over the writhing beast, watching as the serum killed him.  “This is what you wanted,” he said, fighting for breath.  _“Have it.”_   The beast whimpered as Steve shoved _everything_ he had left through the connection between them.  Omega Red shuddered, fading, eyes darkening, soul shriveling.  The final puffs of breath were rattling through his slack, reddened lips.  Steve towered over him, the last taint of the evil purged from him as the super soldier serum expunged it.  Power hummed inside him.  His own.  Healing.  Restoring.  _Dominating._   “I’m the alpha,” he said calmly, “and you’re the omega.  And this is _your_ end.”

Omega Red whimpered once more.  Then he died.

Everything was eerily still.  Steve’s chest heaved with breath, his heart pounding against his sternum, as he watched the monster’s form beneath him to be certain that was it.  That he didn’t move, didn’t spring back to life, _couldn’t_ torment them anymore.  Omega Red was still.  The bright ruby flush over his skin was fading again, turning quickly back to pink and then to gray and finally to white.  Whatever flawed metabolic process inside him continued, consuming flesh and muscle and bone, and the corpse degraded right in front of his eyes.  Steve dispassionately watched the gruesome display.  When it was over and there was nothing left but the metal tentacle still tightly grasped in his hands, he sighed and the taunt rush of power left his body on the long, shaking breath.  He tossed the tentacle to the floor.

“No.”  The sudden denial came from the left, the deep, once arrogant voice positively shattered.  “This can’t be…  I finally found the answer, the _reason_ why it never worked…”  Lukin shook his head.  Apparently Iron Man had come sometime during the fight, and he had the ex-general down on his knees in front of him.  Maybe he’d been trying to escape and Tony had caught him…  It didn’t matter.  The minute he spoke, even as soft and shocked as it was, Bucky attacked.

He was fast, even so exhausted, hurt, and physically drained.  His arm lashed out to knock Iron Man clear away before Stark could do anything to stop him.  “Buck!” Steve cried.  He whipped back, grabbing his shield where it had fallen on the floor, jumping with two huge strides as Bucky bore down on Lukin.  The man was skittering back, hands raised to protect himself, uncharacteristically vulnerable and frightened.  Bucky’s eyes were dark and violent, cold with desire, and he raised his metal fist in preparation for a strike meant to kill.  “Bucky, no!”

It never hit.  Steve got himself between Bucky and Lukin, sliding in at the absolute last second and catching the murderous blow on his shield.  The impact was loud, a clang that echoed through the broken building.  Steve nearly staggered under the force of it.  His body _hurt_ in a way it never had before, but his heart was strong and clear.  He pushed back a little, not enough to hurt or threaten or even convey anger.  Just a small motion to force Bucky to take a step back.  And he did.  He took a step back, uncertain and fearful.  He watched Steve with wide eyes as Steve protected the cowering man behind him, this evil, vindictive monster who had done so much damage to them all.  Who had helped turn Bucky into who he’d become.  _The Winter Soldier._

Steve was breathing heavily, his pulse racing, as he lowered his shield.  He held Bucky’s gaze, refusing to look away even as Bucky tried to.  “Don’t,” he implored softly.  “Don’t do it, Buck.  Don’t murder him.  Don’t be the monster they made you be.”  Steve stood straighter, hoping, _praying_ he could reach through the training and torture again.  Reach through the darkness to find his friend, his _brother_ , under all the horrible things Zola and Lukin and Pierce had done to him.  He could be that source of strength now.  Help Bucky find his way out, his way through, just as Bucky had done for him.  He didn’t dare reach for the other man, no matter how much he wanted to.  He didn’t move, didn’t press, even as the pain shone in Bucky’s eyes.  He simply stood tall and waited.  “You’re not their weapon.  You’re not their asset.  You’re my friend.”

Bucky backed away further.  There were eyes on him, awe-struck.  Police officers were looking down from the floor above.  Sam was there, Natasha tucked against him.  Iron Man.  Even Lukin.  They were all watching him, waiting, hesitant.  Steve reached out his hand, and Bucky’s eyes darted to it.  He seemed terrified.  The clouds were gone from his eyes again, as if he was seeing, truly seeing, beyond the red haze of his anger and hatred.  As if he was realizing how close he’d been to the monster they’d just killed.  A mindless, murdering monster.  And when he did that, he turned and he ran.

Steve wanted to go after him so desperately, but he didn’t.  Not this time.  _“I can’t follow you.  Not like this.”_ Bucky’s voice filled his head, staying his body, keeping him still.  Tony had grabbed Lukin again to prevent his escape, but now he was making to chase Bucky, repulsors charged.  He was about to leap up and catch him where he was climbing back to the second floor.  “No,” Steve called softly but resolutely.  Iron Man turned to him in alarm.  Steve’s eyes burned and his heart ached, but he knew this was right.  It was what Bucky wanted, what he needed.  Bucky wasn’t ready, and Steve wouldn’t force him to be.  “Tony, don’t.  Let him go.  It’s alright.”

“Steve, he…”  Tony trailed off, not understanding at all.  Honestly, there was a part of Steve that didn’t understand, either.  All Bucky had done required justice, demanded facing the truth.  It needed acceptance and healing.  And then there was all _he’d_ done to find him.  All he’d been through to try and bring Bucky back, and now Bucky was _here_ , truly emerging from the hell of HYDRA’s torture and fighting for good.  Fighting alongside him.  But Steve was starting to understand that this wasn’t about bringing Bucky back to the light.  That couldn’t be done, and there was no sense in losing himself in trying.  This was about helping Bucky find his own way there.

And Bucky could.  Bucky could and would come back.  Until then, he would wait.  The healing had started, at least.  And there was hope.  _“You don’t need to find me.  You never did.  I’ll find you.”_ Steve smiled to himself.  He caught Bucky’s eyes once as he ran.  His friend looked back, his gaze clearer, maybe.  Open.  “Til the end of the line, pal,” Steve whispered.  Then he was gone.

Tony lowered his repulsors and instead he manhandled Lukin to his feet.  The authorities were coming now, coming in force, EMTs and police pushing through the wreckage, and Stark went to speak with them.  Eventually Steve heaved a shaking breath, finally tearing his aching eyes away where Bucky had left.  _This is where I belong.  What I need._ He looked to Sam, who offered up a comforting smile.  Then to Natasha.  She was wide-eyed and shaking as she pulled away from Sam’s side.  Steve met her gaze.  He smiled weakly at her.  She smiled back.  Then she was running to him, crossing the distance from the side of the room to its center.  She wrapped her arms around him, burying her face in his neck where his shirt had been ripped away.  He hugged her back as tightly as he dared, his shield still on his other arm at his side.  “You alright?” he whispered into her mussed hair.

“Yeah.”  She was breathing in shallow pants, trying to believe, hesitant to hope this could actually be over.  “Are you?”

Surprisingly, he was.  He was where and how it mattered.  “Yeah.”

She pulled away, eyes a little wet but not enough to be crying, a little glazed but not enough to be shocked.  She was searching him now, deeply so.  She cupped his face, sweeping her thumbs over his filthy, bruised skin, examining him like she wasn’t quite sure she recognized him.  After what he’d just done, what he’d just found it within himself to do, he wasn’t quite sure he recognized himself.  Finally, she smiled again.  “Welcome back, Cap,” she quipped quietly.  It was that same coy little grin she always had had for him, tinged now with so much euphoria and so much relief.

The rattling hum of his shield hitting the ground was pretty loud despite the ruckus, but not as loud as his pounding heart as he held her tight and kissed her as hard as he could.

* * *

As crazy and unbelievable as it was, the entire team was assembled back at the Tower in less than an hour.  And, even more _unfathomable_ , they were mostly unhurt.  Tony had escaped the ordeal with nothing more than a few bruises.  He and Rhodes were together, so relieved to find each other okay after destroying the drones and battling the Hulk.  Sharon looked mussed, exhausted, and pale, but she was unharmed as she and Maria coordinated with local and federal law enforcement.  Maria’s bleeding leg had been tended and bandaged, and she had a pair of crutches that she was begrudgingly using.  Thor was a calm, stalwart presence besides Bruce, who frankly looked rather worse for the wear.  Apparently between Iron Man, Iron Patriot, and the Asgardian, they’d managed to get through to Banner enough to calm him sufficiently to administer the antidote to the insanity serum.  Once that had been flowing in the Hulk’s veins, peace had come quickly, and the man had returned from the monster.  Bruce was exhausted, newly dressed in a sweater and sweatpants, wrapped in a blanket, and nursing a hot cup of tea.  He seemed ashamed, horrified, and troubled, but Tony was there to assure him it was alright, that it wasn’t his fault.  It _was_ alright and it wasn’t his fault.  No one had been seriously hurt by the Hulk, and aside from destroying a warehouse owned by HYDRA, nothing had even been damaged.  It could have been so much worse.

It _all_ could have been so much worse.

Steve lay on an exam bed in the Tower’s medical ward.  Tony had allowed medical personnel and EMTs into the Tower, and they were working on him.  His shoulder had already been stitched anew and bandaged.  The cut across his abdomen was shallow, but they’d still wrapped it in gauze.  Now they were working on the gash in his side.  It was fairly deep but still a flesh wound and not serious enough to require surgery.  Normally it was the sort of thing he’d simply walk off.  He couldn’t because carbonadium had caused it.  That was a little dismaying, but not enough to pierce the surreal haze in his mind.  Natasha was there, sitting in a chair near the head of the bed in case he needed her while the doctor stitched.  He was alright.  It did hurt, but it seemed like a minor complaint given everything that had happened, and he could take it.

Natasha didn’t talk.  She was white, silent, _spent_.  But she was unharmed, and for the moment that was enough for Steve.  And her eyes were brighter than he expected.  She was trying not to show it, but her hand was holding her belly, cradling the twins in a mixture of relief and embarrassed happiness.  The EMTs had already looked her over, bandaging up a few of her deeper scrapes and bruises and checking the babies’ heartbeats.  They were, by the grace of God, completely fine.  “They’re taking Lukin into custody,” Sam called from the door to the room.  He, too, was completely exhausted, functioning on only the ardent will to keep going.  “Malik’s dead.  Wenham’s dead.  And the FBI is all over Wenham’s office, looking for any other warehouses like the one we found.  Just in case HYDRA was going to try this anywhere else.”

Steve nodded, grateful to have someone on their side for a change and running point.  Hopefully the FBI could ferret out more information, determine if HYDRA had made plans beyond New York.  He was certain Maria and Tony would help them with that, and with Rhodes involved, the military would make short work of exterminating any threat they found.  He grimaced at a particularly unpleasant pull of the needle and surgical thread through his torn side.  Natasha heard his short intake of breath and subtly brushed her fingers through his muddied hair.  “Sorry, Captain,” the medic said sincerely.  “We’re almost through here.”

Steve reached up and took Natasha’s hand.  Again, she seemed hesitant, trapped between wanting to believe this was all over and not wanting to let go.  Not certain what to think or feel.  Not quite ready to face reality on the other side.  Clint was dead.  She was pregnant.  And there would be fallout from this.  They were already aware that the media had caught quite a few pictures of Black Widow being chased by Omega Red through the city.  The reporters didn’t know why, but without SHIELD there to protect her and control the information, it could come out.  All of it could.  He offered up a weak smile, dragging his thumb gently over her bruised knuckles.  The sound of Sam collapsing into a plastic chair drew his attention.  “They’re saying about fifty people are dead.”  Natasha flinched.  Sam saw that, leaning forward gingerly to brace his elbows on his thighs.  “Hey, if you hadn’t kept that thing busy, it would have been a lot more.”

“I know,” she said emptily.

“And the people exposed to the serum are getting treatment.  Carter and Hill said that they were able to administer the antidote before anyone went, well, really crazy.”  Sam sighed, his shoulders slumping.  “So I guess it all worked out.”  His voice was a tad hollow.  Empty.  Somewhat deprived of the elation that should have been there, just like Natasha’s was.  Just like they all felt.  Maybe they’d won and HYDRA was (hopefully) vanquished for good, but the cost had been great.  Every time it had been.  After World War II.  After SHIELD had fallen.  And now.

Steve closed his eyes, extremely sore and tired to the bone.  Once the adrenaline of the fight and victory over Omega Red had faded, he felt everything anew.  The beating he’d taken from the Hulk.  The fact that Omega Red had very nearly killed him, and if it hadn’t been for Bucky, he would have died.  He _felt_ drained, physically and emotionally, a tad hollowed out himself.  As he lay there, he let himself drift, trying not to think too much, his fingers woven through Natasha’s.  Yes, the sacrifices had been painful, and the things they lost would be difficult to let go.  But Natasha was safe.  The twins were alright.  And Bucky was out there, somewhere, hopefully coming to terms with who and what he was.  Hopefully he’d find enough of some semblance of peace to come back.  Maybe free himself of his demons.  Steve knew letting him go this time really wasn’t any easier than it had been before.  But everything would heal, scarring perhaps, but he could overcome it.

The doctor clipped the thread and was finishing with the stitches.  She set some of her supplies to the side and started to reach for things to dress the wound.  “Steve,” Sam called, drawing his attention.  He opened hurting eyes and focused blearily on his friend.  Sam shook his head helplessly, confusion and worry clear on his face.  “How…  I mean…  How did you kill him?”

The doctor was taping pads to his tender flank.  “Sit up, Captain, please,” she softly ordered.  Steve grimaced as he did so, the room spinning a little.  Natasha stood with him, steadying him as the medic began to wrap his injury.

Sam went on.  “I mean, I get that you used his hunger against him, but…”  He stood and came closer, limping a bit.  “He was draining you and draining you.  How come he didn’t kill you?”

Steve grimaced against his headache.  He looked at Natasha and found her watching him, the same question in her eyes.  “I…  When he was trying…  Well, the connection between us…”  He paused, fighting to find a decent way to explain it.  “You know how you felt him when he touched you?”  Sam nodded.  “I realized that the connection went both ways.  And I realized I could control it.”

“Control it?” Sam repeated, perplexed.

“Yeah.  I could, I don’t know, _push back_.  Fight it.  Pull away.  Get into him as much as he was into me.  And as long as I could stay stronger than he was, I could control how much of my energy he got.  Even though it was poison, he couldn’t stop taking it.  When he tried, I wouldn’t let him.  Then it was too late.  In the end, I just flooded him with the serum until it killed him.”

“You overdosed him,” Natasha said softly.

Steve looked at her, mulling that over in his head.  It was an apt description as any.  “Yes.”

“Holy shit, dude,” Sam whispered, shaking his head.  “You are all kinds of crazy.”  Steve couldn’t help but smile at that and duck his head in just a little shame.  It _was_ crazy, and he could have died.  He nearly had.  If it hadn’t been for Bucky…  “It’s a damn good thing you heal so fast.”

For some reason, that gave him pause.  _I heal fast.  I healed almost as fast as he could drain me.  As fast as he took my life away._

_As fast as I gave it._

_And I could control it._

“Clint,” he whispered.  Before Natasha, Sam, or the doctor could stop him, he was sliding off the bed.  His knees threatened to fold under him, but they didn’t.  Pain arched up his injured side and sore hip, but he didn’t let that or anything else stop him.  He grabbed the clean shirt on the chair beside the bed and limped quickly to the door.

“Captain Rogers!  Wait!  I’m not done!”

“Steve, what’re you–”

“Steve!”

Steve was already hobbling down the short hallway to the lab area where everyone else was.  He stuffed his arms into the shirt and pulled it over his head, not even bothering with a grimace at the stretch on his newly stitched injuries.  He ignored the pounding of his head, the pounding of his heart, the fervent demand of his body to _rest_ , and burst into the lab.  “Where’s the carbonadium we brought back from Prague?”

“What?” Tony asked in befuddlement, looking up at Steve from where he was sitting next to Bruce.

“The metal shard,” Steve said, breathless and a bit exasperated.  He came deeper into the lab, scanning over the desks and tables and all of the idle equipment.  “Where is it?”

“Why?” Tony demanded.  He was worried.

Behind them, Sam and Natasha came, each of them worried, too.  Steve heaved a short breath.  God, how could he explain this without sounding completely insane?  He settled on the direct approach.  No sense in trying hide that this was probably utter lunacy.  “I think I can use it to save Clint.”

Everyone stared at him like he was out of his mind.  Maybe he was.  They were gaping, doubting, disbelieving.  Tony and Rhodes.  Sharon and Maria.  Bruce.  Thor.  Sam and Natasha.  “Come again?” Tony asked.

Steve forced himself to calm down.  “The carbonadium creates a bridge between two people, right?  So I–”

“Clint’s dead,” Sharon said softly, like it was something that had been forgotten.

Thor came to Steve’s side.  “You are not well, my friend,” he said sadly.  “You should rest.”

“No.  No, _listen_.  The carbonadium creates a _bridge_ between two people–”

“Cap, come on,” Tony said.  He dropped his head into his hands, raking his fingers roughly through his hair.  “We don’t need this right now.”

Steve wasn’t going to be deterred.  The more he thought about it, talked about it, _felt_ it, the more he knew this was right.  He couldn’t say _how_ he knew.  He simply knew, like he’d known how to stop Omega Red.  “I don’t know if it’s Loki’s magic or the carbonadium itself or whatever Gamma radiation they used to make it…  It doesn’t matter.  It’s a bridge.  Omega Red used it to drain energy.  He used it to take Clint’s life.  I can use it to give it back.”  They still stared at him.  Unabashedly _stared_.  Not understanding.  Steve sighed, trying to collect his composure.  “The carbonadium just opens the door.  He pulled, but it doesn’t have to be that way.  You can push.”

Tony started to get frustrated, like the mere idea that Barton could somehow be brought back was too cruel to even consider.  “That’s crazy.  What you’re saying…  It’s fucking nuts.”

“No,” Bruce murmured quietly from his side.  He stood from his chair, hunched and broken, but there was light returning to his eyes.  A touch of understanding.  Excitement.  Hope.  “No, he’s right.  It’s a bridge.  A medium.  What we thought in the beginning.  A conduit.”

Steve could hardly contain his gratitude that _someone_ believed him.  “Bruce, is it possible?”

Now everyone was watching Banner, like he had the power to render some sort of firm answer.  To make this sudden, far-fetched, _ludicrous_ idea plausible.  “I don’t know.  It would be dangerous, but maybe–”

“Barton died almost two hours ago,” Hill quietly reminded.

Bruce shook his head.  “The body doesn’t all die at once.  Hours after death many cells, even sections of organs or the entirety of them, may still function.  That’s why organ transplant works.  There can even be brain activity in the absence of a measurable pulse.”

“Wait,” Sharon said.  “You think you can…”

“I think I can use the carbonadium to give Clint some of my life,” Steve explained.  Now more than before he knew he could.

Tony’s eyes glazed.  “Like jumping a dead battery…”

In the tense, frightened silence that followed, he felt more than saw Natasha stiffen behind him.  Nobody else moved or spoke, like time was holding still, very still, waiting.  Waiting. 

Tony was out of his seat now.  He jumped to the lab bench, fishing around loudly, until he produced the spike of carbonadium.  He was breathing heavily, wide-eyed and hesitant, but he had the metal clenched tightly in his hand.  The decision was unannounced, wordless, unquestioned even though it was dangerous and crazy.  Bruce was moving with him, the two of them rushing to the corridor that led to the infirmary rooms.  Sharon followed and Maria, who limped on her crutches with amazing alacrity, went after her.  Thor looked at Steve.  “You risk yourself by doing this,” he gravely murmured.

“I know,” Steve responded, “but I also know it can be done.”

“Let me.”

“It doesn’t work on you,” he reminded quietly.  “Thor, it’s alright.  It’s worth the chance.  And I can take it.”  _I can heal as fast as I give myself to him._

Thor didn’t look convinced.  If this truly was Asgardian magic, then it was no business of Steve’s to meddle with it.  However, he said nothing further to dissuade him, clasping his good shoulder as he nodded and briskly walked to the room where Clint’s body was.

Steve took a deep breath and followed.  Sam shook his head as he passed them.  “Christ, this is insane.”

“No, it’s not.”  He offered up half of a smile, heading down the hallway.

Sam wasn’t placated, trailing him with heated steps.  “You got more to think about than this!  Come on!  I’ll say it if she won’t.”  Natasha stiffened again but remained silent.  “You’ve got people who need you.  You’re going to be a father.  You can’t just–”

“Sam,” Steve said softly.  “I know.  And you’re right.  But this is going to work.”

“It won’t…  Steve…”  They reached Clint’s room.  Sam stared at him like he couldn’t believe any of this.   His eyes were hard, his lips set tightly in a frown.  He huffed a quivering sigh.  “Damn it, this is _bullshit_ …  I’m watching you the whole time.  If you start struggling, I’m pulling you off.”

Steve nodded.  “I know.”

Sam glared a moment more, strictly unhappy with this, before going inside the room where the team was working.  Tony and Bruce were talking, operating swiftly, pulling the sheet away from the bed and turning the monitors and machines back on.  Bruce was asking for epinephrine, and Sharon’s hands were shaking as she dug through the mess to find some needles.  Clint was gray, cold, _dead._   His eyes were tightly closed, his skin lusterless, his body still.  Tony hesitated a moment but then handed Thor the carbonadium spike.  He pushed close to the hospital bed and started CPR.  Started it on a corpse.  Trying to jump start whatever they could.  “Get the vent on,” Bruce ordered.

“Can we get Steve on the monitors?” Sam demanded, coming closer and staring hard at the spike of metal in Thor’s hand.

“JARVIS, set it up,” Tony gasped, working hard to force Clint’s heart to pump the adrenaline Bruce was injecting.  “Come on.”

“There’s another pulse ox over here,” Sharon said.

“Could this really work?”

“Start praying.”

“Don’t think I’ve stopped since this nightmare started…”

The rushed conversation faded.  Steve watched a second more at the door before turning to Natasha.  She stood across from him, pale and exhausted.  But her eyes were bright with so many things.  Fear.  Anger.  Doubt.  Hope.  _Love._   “Don’t do this,” she whispered.  The world closed around them, everything else a distant blur of sight and sound and emotion.  “I lost him.  I can’t lose you.”

“You won’t,” Steve assured.  “I told you there was a way to bring him back.  I promised you.  This is it.”

She shook her head, frowning, battling tears.  “This isn’t about keeping a promise!  Don’t do this for me!”

“I’m doing it for Clint,” Steve responded.

“Goddamn it, Rogers…”  She shuddered.  He turned away.  She didn’t let him go, fisting his shirt and yanking him back.  Now she was in control, kissing hot and hard and almost rough.  It seemed to go on forever, her fingers tight in his shirt and hair, her tongue against his, tasting and drinking and feasting and _taking_.  And he let her.  He let her have anything.  _Anything.  Everything._   She finally stopped, turning away, shaking and shaking.  He let her have that, too.

Steve drew a deep breath and went into to the room.  The team was there, waiting for him.  Tony, pumping at Clint’s unmoving chest.  Bruce, ready with a defibrillator, his own trauma forgotten in a rush of hope.  Maria, watching with disbelief and doubt etched into her frown.  Sharon, hovering close, not daring to hope.  Sam, grabbing him as he came closer and attaching some sort of monitor to his finger and another to his chest.  Thor, nodding firmly, brotherly affection gleaming in his eyes as he handed Steve the spike of carbonadium.  It was hot in his hand, still so hot.  He knew why now.  It was hot with his own energy.

Steve stepped to the bed.  Clint was lifeless, flooded with adrenaline, his heart being compressed and his lungs being filled with oxygen.  Steve stared at him, stared and sank into a quiet place inside.  _For Clint.  For Nat._

_Nobody dies for this.  They’re not taking anything more._

“Steve, you ready?”  Bruce’s voice drew him out, and he took another breath and nodded.  “Alright.”

Steve reached to the bed for Clint’s limp hand.  He took it, cold flesh and unmoving fingers in his own, and set one end of the carbonadium spike into it.  He took a cleansing breath.  Then another.  And another.  He slowly slashed his palm on the sharp edge of the metal.  It stung, but he didn’t really feel the pain.  He didn’t know if this mattered, if his blood on the spear mattered, but he was invested in this, and he’d do anything to increase the chances of it working.  So he let the red slowly slip down, curling his other hand around Clint’s to force him to hold on.  Then he closed his eyes.  And he searched.

The connection was there, but there was nothing.

Tony speaking.  Bruce.  Thor.  Machines and sounds.

_Go deeper._

Nothing.  Nothing but blankness, a gray formless, endless void.  _Clint’s gone.  Clint’s dead.  You can’t save him._

_No.  Go deeper!_

The world was disappearing, swallowed into the emptiness.  Sound.  Sight.  He was alone in that fog again, alone and he couldn’t find his way.

_Yes, you can._

And he was so tired.  Drained.  Nothing left to give anyway.  Nothing left.

_Yes, there is.  There is.  There’s–_

There was light ahead.  Faint.  Hardly anything, but it was light.  A light in the void.  He saw it in his mind’s eye, saw it as the cloud cover came in around him.  _Clint._   He ran for it.  Ran across the bridge.  Reached for it.  Got to it.  Grabbed it.  It was almost nothing, just a speck in a world of darkness and shadow and gray.  But he found it, took it, cradled it, protected it.  And he brought it to himself, to his own light, and let himself _go_.

_Push.  Push into him._

“Look!”

“Is that a…  There.  His heart contracted.”

“Holy shit…  This is working!”

_Keep pushing.  Keep giving.  Keep going._

“Shit.  Sam, Steve’s heart rate’s going down!”

“Oh, God.  What do we do?”

“I don’t know!  Watch his breathing!”

There was cold coming now, ice everywhere.  Crystalline clouds.  He let them come closer because he couldn’t let go now.  Not now.  Not ever.  _“You fight, Stevie.  You’re Captain America.  Always have been.  Always will be.”_

“Is he alright?  Should we–”

_“You were meant for more than this.”_

“He said he could do it!  He’ll do it!”

_“I know you, Steve.  I know who you are.  And I love you.”_

“Come on, Clint.  Come on!”

_I have him.  I can save him.  I can save him.  I can…_

He pushed his life out of his body.  His energy.  His vitality.  And he felt what Clint had felt.  The coldness.  The pain.  Death.  _No._   He drove all of that away, the nothingness, and gave everything he had instead.

And it worked.

“Pull him back!  Pull him back!  Clint’s got a shockable rhythm!”

“I can’t believe it…”

“Tony, get away!”

Vaguely he felt things again.  His fingers unfurling from the hard, hot thing clenched in his hand.  Arms wrapped around him, dragging, carrying.  Air in his lungs.  Blood in his body.  Someone was moving him.  Sam’s arms.  Thor’s.  Someone else was gasping a sob in amazement.  In relief.  It was Sharon.  “Oh, my God…  Clint?”

“No, easy, Clint!  Clint!  Take it easy.  You’re alright.  It’s alright.”

“Bruce–”

“Yeah, I see it.  We’ll get the tube out.  Sam, is Steve–”

“He’s alright.  He’s…”

Steve tried to force open his eyes, but they wouldn’t cooperate.  And when they did, they wouldn’t focus.  And when they focused…  “Clint?” he whispered.

Clint’s eyes were open, too, hazy and teary but _alive_.  They met Steve’s for just a moment, a tenuous moment that didn’t quite feel real, and then Steve slumped against Thor.  “You did it, my friend,” came the rumble under his ear.  “You did it.”

Laughter.  Voices alight in surprise and joy and elation.  They were moving him again so that he was lying down, laying on something hard and flat.  The floor.  Thor and Sam were still with him, gentle hands and worried but relieved looks and ridiculously large smiles.  Steve licked his lips, dazed and so very exhausted.  People were talking.  He couldn’t make out the words.  He only wanted…  “Nat?”

She was right there, leaning over Clint as Tony and Bruce worked.  At his whisper, she turned, left Clint’s side and swept toward him like liquid fire.  So beautiful.  He felt her hands, small and light but strong, warm to his cool skin.  Tender against his face.  He let his eyes slip shut again.  “Nat…”

“I’m here,” she promised.  She kissed him, lightly at first but then harder and harder, feverishly pressing her lips all over his face.  Devouring his mouth.  She choked out a happy sob into his chin.  “You’re so stupid!  You’re so…  I can’t…  I…”

The world was darkening, but that was alright.  He was going to sleep now.  There wouldn’t be any nightmares.  She was with him, kissing him again, her hands gentle on the sides of his face.  And when she pulled away, he couldn’t help the rush of warmth and strength and _love_ inside him.  He was tumbling down now, falling fast.  Still, as his eyes closed and consciousness fled, one last thing remained.  A small, giddy grin crooked his lips, and a weak whisper of words brushed against her cheek.  “Marry me?”

Her wide, wet eyes were the last lights in his world as he faded away.


	15. Chapter 15

There really weren’t words to describe what happened after that.  After Steve stopped Omega Red and saved Clint.  “Incredible” might have been a good attempt, but this was more than incredible.  Awesome.  Frightening.  Overwhelming.  Unsettling.  _Joyous._   It was all those things at once somehow, and the whirlwind of action and talk and emotion left Natasha absolutely reeling.  So much was happening.  The city was recovering from the attack.  Clint was recovering.  Steve was recovering.  _Everyone_ was recovering.  It seemed like everything was finally going to be alright.

She didn’t feel alright, though.  Well, that wasn’t entirely true.  A part of her most certainly did.  Clint was alive.  _He was alive and okay._   That was stunning and amazing considering what had happened to him.  He’d fallen asleep shortly after Tony and Bruce had extubated him, and in the couple of days that followed, he’d drifted in and out of consciousness.  Yesterday it had finally become more in than out, and he was awake often enough to be aware of what was happening around him.  He was still pale, lethargic, and extremely weak, but all things considered, his body was restoring itself.  Bruce wasn’t sure if his convalescence was due to Steve’s energy healing his cells, the magic of the carbonadium, or his own will to fight.  Natasha believed it was probably all three.  The organ damage was reversing itself.  The muscle atrophy was disappearing.  Bruce was left flabbergasted, remarking that this was now the second instance of which they knew where the super soldier serum had affected someone else’s physiology.  Technically, although no one wanted to mention it, it was the third, since Steve had used his own vitality to kill Omega Red.  Regardless, Clint was very quickly on the mend, emerging from unconsciousness stronger and more cognizant each time.  It was a miracle, nothing less.

Of course, there was damage that wasn’t healing.  It would have been monumentally naïve to think someone could escape what Clint had endured unscathed.  As he became aware enough to engage with those around him, it was immediately obvious something wasn’t right, that he was having a hard time understanding what had happened simply because he couldn’t hear what they were telling him.  A simple auditory test revealed he’d lost more than 70% of his hearing in his right ear and about 50% in his left, enough to be considered moderately deaf.  Bruce believed the injuries were to the anatomy of his ears itself and were sadly permanent.  The damage probably occurred during the fight and so they pre-dated Omega Red draining his biochemical energy, which could explain why the serum hadn’t been able to undo them.  Natasha found that news more devastating than Clint did.  Predictably, Clint had no recollection of what had happened to him beyond engaging Omega Red in the alley outside the hotel, so he was fairly overjoyed and overwhelmed (in his typically calm and cool manner) just to be alive.  When he learned of how serious things had become, that he’d _died_ , and what Steve had done to save him…  That had immediately tempered any grief and regret he’d had over the loss of his hearing.  Natasha knew him too well to think he’d simply be okay with this, even with Bruce’s and Tony’s assurances that it wasn’t a big deal, that they could develop hearing aids or maybe even implants to restore almost all of his hearing.  Eventually the loss would sink its teeth into his heart; Clint was nothing if not independent, and he didn’t take well to anything that hindered his ability to do his job.  He didn’t simply _accept_ limitations, and he never would.  However, for the moment, and given what he’d almost lost, this seemed relatively minor.  He was himself, having suffered no ill effects or brain damage from being clinically dead for almost two hours.  He was getting out of bed, walking around, eating and drinking and talking.  Smiling.  Laughing.  He was alive, and the team couldn’t have been more grateful.

While this was happening, a flurry of other things were simultaneously bombarding her.  She had escaped the ordeal unhurt, which was nothing short of a blessing.  Bruce had given her another ultrasound later that evening after taking care of Clint and Steve.  It was far less disturbing and upsetting this time as he’d checked the babies to ensure they hadn’t been injured during the flight from and the fight with Omega Red.  They hadn’t been.  They were as resilient as their father was, it seemed.  She’d stared at the screen unafraid, even without Steve at her side.  She watched their little faces and bodies, and while her doubts were still there, they weren’t as pressing as they had been.  When she’d looked, she didn’t see her own fears reflected back at her.  Again, acceptance wasn’t going to come easily.  Even then she felt the struggle within herself, the battle between who she always had been and who she would have to become.  Still, for the first time since learning she was pregnant, she felt something uniquely for _them_ , something soft and unobtrusive.  It wasn’t simply that the ever-present nausea was finally abating or that she was at long last getting enough rest and acclimating to the idea of being pregnant, though those were welcome changes.  As she watched them, the twins growing inside her, she was warm.  Peaceful and fairly content.  It took her beleaguered mind a while to realize what this alien sensation swelling in her heart actually was.  It was love.  She felt _love_ for _them_ , a sort of love she’d never felt before.  It wasn’t just love because they were a part of Steve.  And it wasn’t demanding or passionate, the sort she had for Steve.  It was timid, gentle, the first brush of something novel and maybe even exciting and strictly _hers_.  This was much more than just a need to protect.  This was a need to cherish.

She wasn’t sure how she felt about that.

At any rate, Bruce had prescribed prenatal vitamins, eating well, and resting as much as possible.  She had simply nodded and agreed.  He, too, seemed to be healing, recuperating from so completely losing his control at the whims of the insanity serum.  There was light in his eyes, a smile on his slightly haggard face.  There was a smile on all of their faces.  Thor.  Tony.  Maria and Sharon.  Sam.  It was good to see it, to be among friends.  Their team had inexplicably come back together in this nightmare, and now in the wake, they were forging stronger bonds than they had before after the Battle of New York.  For the first time in what felt to be a long time, there was no threat looming over them.  No shadow.  SHIELD was gone.  HYDRA was gone.  The Winter Soldier was gone.  There were only the Avengers, and she felt safe and protected among them.

It was a much welcomed change after running and fearing for her life for so long, although things weren’t quite that simple.  With the help of Hill, Stark, and Rhodes, the FBI had located three more HYDRA warehouses, two in LA and one in Tampa.  Each had been loaded with crates upon crates of the insanity serum.  The thugs assigned to those shipments had been arrested and were being interrogated by the authorities.  Similar plots to unleash the serum on Los Angeles and both Orlando and Tampa had been revealed, and the government had stopped them and was working to dismantle whatever remained of HYDRA within its own ranks.  Wenham being discovered as a traitor had spurned something of a hunt, announced to the American people by President Ellis himself.  The President had also quashed the warrants out for Natasha and followed that by granting amnesty to all SHIELD agents and employees who had unknowingly served HYDRA’s interests during their tenure with the intelligence organization.  He’d come out strongly behind the Avengers, which only furthered the public outcry of support for them.  There were detractors, of course; there always were.  But it was strangely, ridiculously _nice_ for once to have people whole-heartedly on their side.  The debacle with Project: Insight had so soured the country on SHIELD and everything related to it that this was exactly what the public needed to come out anew in support of the Avengers.  The appreciation and adoration was perhaps not as strong as it had been after the Chitauri incident, but it was more directed, more poignant, because so much of it was for _her._   Natasha couldn’t believe the rallying cry across the country for her, on the internet and news channels and magazines and even daytime talk shows…  _Everyone_ was showering her with praise, as though she’d been the one to defeat HYDRA and Omega Red.  Images proliferated social media, images of her getting the monster away from civilians and bravely facing him down on 46 th Street and in Times Square.  Hers was the most visible face of the event, hers, Carter’s, and Hill’s, and the three of them were being lauded as heroes.

Granted it had been Steve and Thor to keep the Hulk contained so that he couldn’t hurt or endanger innocent people.  And granted it had been Tony and Rhodes who’d stopped the drones.  _And_ it had been Steve who’d put Omega Red down in the end.  But Captain America had been out of uniform and without his shield.  Thor had fought his battle alone in a field miles and miles from the city.  And Iron Man and Iron Patriot had been aloft for most of the fight.  _Her face_ was the one representing the Avengers.  Black Widow was cool, calm, and standing strong against evil.  It was empowering in an odd way she hadn’t expected.  Attention like this had never sat well with her, but this time she couldn’t help but feel proud of herself.  The others didn’t care at all.  She’d emerged from Clint’s room one afternoon to find the team assembled in front of numerous news feeds, watching the coverage of the attack, replaying footage of her in her fight against Omega Red.  Thor had grinned at her and Tony had flung an arm around her shoulders and jokingly told her to appreciate the accolades because they didn’t last.  She’d glared at him enough for him to sheepishly let her go, but still, when she turned away to head back to Clint’s room, she couldn’t help her smile.

And the country, the world even, knew it needed the Avengers now more than ever before.  And the Avengers knew they were needed.  In the days that followed the attack, there was no talk of drifting apart, of going separate ways like there had been last time.  Thor stayed without anyone asking him to, and no mention of returning to Asgard was made.  Bruce didn’t say a thing about his abandoned projects overseas.  Tony and Maria were back to planning almost instantly, using the momentum from the team’s reunion and the public’s outpouring of support to go forward with their ideas of privatizing world security.  The demands for answers were numerous, and Tony held a brief press conference to explain what had happened, about HYDRA’s threat to humanity and about how the Avengers had worked together in the wake of SHIELD’s collapse to stop it.  It was a strange thing, even for him who’d never cared for SHIELD’s overarching presence, to handle the fall-out from something like this without guidance, restrictions, or supervision.  He’d stood in front of the press and responded to what questions he could with his characteristic wit, poise, and charm, and to those inquiries about the future of the Avengers and their place in the world he uncharacteristically declared that Captain America would answer those later.

Captain America would answer with those later simply because Captain America had spent two whole days sleeping.  Clint came back from the dead faster than Steve came back from the deepest slumber Natasha had ever seen.  After collapsing ( _fainting_ , and Tony promised endless ribbing later) at Clint’s bedside, Sam and Thor had transferred Steve to the bed in the suite he and Natasha had been given.  There he’d been since, unmoving, barely even stirring.  Bruce had examined him a few times and found he was fine.  His vital signs were a little erratic, but it was nothing concerning.  Considering what he’d done, how much of himself he’d used to destroy Omega Red and what he’d sacrificed for Clint, it was only natural he’d be in need of some serious, restorative rest.  Banner had recommended they simply let him sleep, that his body would know when it had recovered.  So they were.  JARVIS was keeping an eye on him.  They were _all_ keeping an eye on him, Sam most of all.  Sam was alight with good cheer for the first time since Natasha had known him, smiling easy smiles and joking with the others.  He churlishly remarked every time he came or left their suite how much “sleeping beauty needed his beauty sleep”.  He’d even joked that Natasha should try true love’s kiss to see if that did the trick.  She’d never admit it to him or anyone else ( _ever_ ), but when she’d been alone with Steve, she had.  Once or twice.  Maybe a lot more.

 _True love’s kiss._   She’d never believed in fantasies or fairy tales, had no context for them in real life.  She’d found them trite, nonsense of the worst sort, placating idiocies made for simple minds and weak hearts.  Life was not a fantasy.  Life was hard, cruel, and dark.  Life was survival of the fittest, kill or be killed, a game where the hardest and strongest conquer and all the rest were left to be marks and victims.  That was what she knew, what she believed.  _“Love is for children.”_   That hadn’t been a lie she’d said it to Loki two years ago.  _“Black Widow does not feel.  Black Widow does not love.”_

That was too much, too distressing.  And it wasn’t true.  She was never going back to who she had been, not the Black Widow of the Red Room, not even the Black Widow of SHIELD.  That life was over, with Lukin in custody, Brushov dead, and the Red Room shut down.  With SHIELD gone.  She was truly on the cusp of something new, as clichéd as that was.  It was a fantasy of sorts, but not one she’d _ever_ envisioned for herself.  And with the answer to one simple question, it could become reality.

Truth be told, she wasn’t sure how she felt about that either, other than the fact she was pretty damn terrified of it.  Steve spending the last few days sleeping time away had left her with nothing but her thoughts and anxieties and doubts.  She was no one’s wife.  Lover, yes.  Partner, yes.  Wife?  But, then, she was no one’s mother, either, and she was months away from inevitably becoming the mother to Captain America’s son and daughter.  The shock of his proposal had left her reeling and caught up in herself.  Much like the pregnancy had been, this was a thorn in the back of her mind, niggling and pricking and sticking itself into every thought no matter how unrelated.  Steve wanted to marry her.  _He wanted to marry her._   Just like that.  She was pregnant and he would do what was right by her, of course, and that meant old-fashioned views and traditional opinions.  Marriage.  Building a life for her and their children.  Providing for her like those sorts of mundane expectations even _existed_ in their world.  Everything was so simple and easy for him.  But it wasn’t really.  She didn’t believe in marriage, in something so trifling and stupid as a ring to symbolize a vow to someone else.  Furthermore, she was an assassin, a spy, and no matter what she did, she was always going to be that.  And he was always going to be a soldier and a hero.  Captain America.  What the hell had he been thinking?

Maybe he hadn’t been thinking.  Lord knew he’d been through so much, from what had happened to him in the Triskelion all the way to nearly killing himself to save Clint.  As the hours mounted and her heartache grew, she started to desperately hope he hadn’t been in his right mind.  That maybe everything had been so jumbled up in his head that logic and reality had been completely overrun by lunacy.  God, it would be so nice if it had.  That would take the weight of this right off her shoulders.  Maybe he hadn’t meant it, like the neurons in his brain had just fired randomly and out of sync because of all the trauma and out this craziness had popped.  Maybe he wouldn’t mention it again.  Maybe he wouldn’t remember it at all.

“Did I ask you to marry me?”

So much for that idea.

Natasha turned away from the vanity where she was finishing her make-up and looked over at the California king-size bed to find hazy blue eyes blearily watching her.  Steve was half covered in the expensive sheets and blankets, head still on the pillow, forehead furrowed, blinking repeatedly like he was having trouble focusing.  He probably was.  She watched him watch her, and she didn’t know what to say.  She finally remembered to breathe and settled on the truth.  “Yeah, you did.”

“Thought maybe it was a dream or something…”  He offered up a dopey grin that didn’t really hide his worry.  “What did you say?”

A ton of different answers rattled through her head, some of them outright lies.  She didn’t want to hurt him, but she didn’t know…  She wasn’t…  “I didn’t say anything.”

He groaned as he sat up, the sheets tumbling down into his lap revealing the broad, muscular expanse of his chest.  His shoulder and side were still bandaged.  And the slice across his abdomen was red and sore-looking.  It hadn’t healed yet, at least not as much as it should have.  He rubbed the heel of his palm into his eye, the one that was wrapped in gauze from where he’d cut it healing Clint.  She simply watched, watched the muscles shift and flex under flawless skin.  She knew every one of them, every dip and hard line and smooth plane.  She’d memorized them, kissed them, touched them and explored them and owned them.  But the way he moved still entranced her.  _He’s offering himself to you.  Everything.  He always has, always will.  What’s wrong with making it official?_   Just the thought of that was too much.  She expected him to ask again, to want an answer, but he surprised her.  He slid his legs over the edge of the bed, grimacing a little as he took stock of his body.  “Did a real number on myself,” he said with that dumb, crooked grin again, like he hadn’t scared her half to death yet again.  “Bet you’re gettin’ tired of it.”

She couldn’t lie.  “A bit.”

“Was worth it, though.  How’s Clint?”

“He’s alright.”

Steve nodded, relieved at that.  “How long was I out?”

“A few days.”

“Are you okay?”

Natasha could hardly find her voice.  “Fine.”

He stood, stretching a little, toes curling in the carpet.  She watched.  It was looming over them, the question he’d asked that she hadn’t answered.  But he still said nothing about it, taking a few sore, ginger steps over to her.  A part of her wanted to stand and help him, but she didn’t.  She couldn’t move, frozen in her chair.  All the long minutes she’d spent the last few days waiting for him to wake up, anxious and desperate to resolve this whole marriage thing, and now she couldn’t move and couldn’t speak and couldn’t feel anything beyond her own hesitation and fear.  He stood beside her chair.  His joints seemed to creak stiffly as he dropped down to one knee next to her.  His eyes were deep blue despite the morning light bathing the room.  It bathed him, making him seem almost ethereal.  Other-worldly.  Not quite real.  He had to be, to be who he was and do the things he’d done.  Watching him fight Omega Red had simultaneously been terrifying and amazing.  Looking back on it now, she realized she’d never really doubted that he would win.  He was that good, that strong.  That pure.

That brought all of her doubts back so acutely.  He smiled again, softer.  “What’s the matter?”

“You know what’s the matter,” she said, shaking her head and looking away.

“What?”  He drew closer, so oddly bold and flippant considering the hellfire through which they’d just come and the enormity of what he’d brazenly proposed.  “You wanted me to get down on one knee?  Get a ring and pop the question?”  He was actually teasing her.  She knew why.  Disarming her with his trust, with his smile.  Just like his always had before all of this had happened to them.  “I think you might be in the wrong business.”

She couldn’t help her own smile or her slightly choked laugh.  But her smile faded as quickly as it had come.  “Steve, you can’t ask me–”

“I will, you know.  I’m already here.  On one knee.  Which is probably the way I should have done it in the first place, and I’m sorry about that, but, lord, Nat, it just sort of happened.  But I’ll get you anything you want.  If you want a ring, I’ll get it for you.”

“Steve…”

“Marry me.”  The words were there again, this time firmer.  Less of a question and more of a request.

She hid her terror with her own sly smile.  “Remember what I told you when we starting seeing each other?  I told you you can’t give me orders.”

His mirth slipped slightly.  He took her hands where they were in her lap.  His thumbs were gentle, sweeping across her skin, and then he raised them to his mouth and kissed each knuckle worshipfully.  She watched his lips move, watched his eyes slip shut and the breath leave him to send the strong lines of his shoulders down, not with defeat but certainly with a shade of pain.  “Please don’t tell me I’m just doing this because you’re pregnant.”

“You’re not?”  That came out a tad harsher than she intended.  She didn’t think lowly of him for that; rather, him wanting to take care of her like this was so _him_ , so much Steve Rogers in heart and soul.  Taking responsibility and doing the right thing and living morally and valorously without a doubt or second thought.  Even if it was outdated and old-fashioned, it was what he knew.  After everything that had happened to him, loving her and delving with her into this dark and dangerous world of hers, he was still who he always had been.  But she was afraid this wasn’t something he really wanted, that he was doing this _here_ and _now_ only because of the babies.  He wouldn’t have done it otherwise.

Thankfully, he didn’t take offense.  He seemed to understand her doubts weren’t rooted in concerns about his sincerity.  “I’m asking you to marry me because I love you.  I love you more than I thought I could ever love anyone.  Maybe I wouldn’t have done it like this…  I’m not talking about the ring and getting down on one knee–”

“Steve.”

“Maybe I wouldn’t have done it right now if it wasn’t for the twins.  But I didn’t expect them or everything that’s happened…  You’ve never been what I expected.”  She looked away, ashamed and shaking her head.  He took her chin and tenderly turned her face so that she looked back at him.  Those deep blue eyes peered into hers.  “No, I’m not…  I’m not saying what I mean.  You’re so much _more_ than what I expected.  More than what I wanted.  More than I deserve.”  He caressed her lips with his thumb, not letting her look away or give up on this.  “I want you, Nat.  I want you the way you are, everything you are right now, everything in your past, and everything in your future.  I want this with you.”

She couldn’t believe how naïve he was, _still_ , after all these months and after all the damage done to them both.  “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“Yes, I do.”  He was so sure.  “Do you love me?”

She hesitated.  Of course she did but this wasn’t about _him_ , only he didn’t understand that.  It wasn’t about his strength or his faith.  Until recently, those had been unshakable, and she had a feeling they would be again, probably even more so.  Hers weren’t so steady.  “Love’s not always enough,” she returned quietly, pulling away not harshly but firmly enough that he didn’t follow her when she stood.

She could feel his eyes on her.  “Why not?”

How could he not see this?  “Because I’m me and you’re you.  I’m Black Widow and you’re Captain America.  You are not supposed to marry someone like me.  And I’m not supposed to be with you.  This was never supposed to happen.”

His face crinkled in indignant defiance.  “Why not?”  He pushed himself gingerly to his feet.  “There’s no SHIELD, Nat.  No Red Room.  There’s nothing and no one that owns you.  There’s just you and me.”  He shook his head.  “Why do you care–”

“Because I do,” she said.  “I do because maybe you do deserve something better than–”

“Don’t tell me what I want,” he returned.

“Then don’t tell me I can be what you need.”

“Nat, love, please.  You’re probably going to hate me for saying this, and _believe me_ , the irony is not lost on me, but this isn’t you.”  He took her arms and pulled her closer once more.  She expected herself to be rigid, stiff and unyielding, but she went easily.  He’d torn down her defenses so long ago.  “This doubt and whatever else you’re feeling…  It’s not you.”  He was warm and strong and solid, very much the man he’d been before SHIELD had destroyed him.  The man with endless faith in her to be better than who she was made to be.  That was the same faith that had spared Barnes.  The same faith he always had in himself.  He wasn’t asking her to live up to those expectations, that she could be good enough to be his wife and the mother of his children, but that was implicit in all of this, wasn’t it?  Even if he said otherwise, it was there.  Captain America’s wife.  The mother of Captain America’s children.  There was something _pure_ about that, and she was many things to many people, but pure was not one of them.

It didn’t matter to him.  How could that not matter?  “We’re going to have a baby,” he said softly, brushing her hair back from her face.  “Two of them.  Ours.  Yours and mine.  I want that with _you._ ”  His grip was firm, insistent.  Just as insistent as the devotion in his eyes.  “Marry me,” he said again.  “Please.”

Natasha’s face went completely lax.  The meager color that had come to her cheeks drained.  Her mouth hung limply open, her teary eyes widening.  Her lower lip quivered until she bit it.  “Steve, you can’t want me like this.”

“God, Nat, what do I have to say to convince you?”  He wasn’t angry, maybe a tad frustrated but not enough to upset her.  “I want you _exactly_ like this.  I wouldn’t ask you if I didn’t.  You’re all I want.  You and them.”  He slid an arm around her back and trapped her against him, his mouth hot on hers, seeking, yearning, wanting to _show_ her if his words weren’t enough.  She let him in.  She was sinking into him, into this moment.  He wasn’t normally like this, so brash and demanding, but he wasn’t the man he’d been before.  Somehow better in some ways, in many ways.  Maybe worse in others.  A little scarred.  But mostly just _stronger._   She opened her mouth to him, let him kiss her until she was breathless.  He tipped his forehead to hers.  “I want our family.”  She physically jerked at that word, paling more and shaking her head.  He didn’t allow her that instinctive reaction.  Tenderly he pressed his hand over the small swell in her lower abdomen, felt the firmness there and closed his eyes.  She was flush to his chest, breathing shakily like this was too much, too much to think and too much to feel.  “I love you,” he whispered into her hair.

They were quiet for what felt like a long time.  His hand on her belly felt somehow protective, possessive, and weak all at same time, more telling than anything he’d said or did about how much he needed her.  Needed this.  Eventually he pulled back, brushing her hair away from her face again.  If his thumb wiped away a wayward tear, he didn’t say anything about it.  Instead, he smiled again.  “Think about it.  Tell me when you’re ready.  Okay?  I’ll wait.”  She was still unmoving against him.  She couldn’t think, at least not about anything beyond his question.  His request.  _His reverence._   But then she nodded.  He laughed a little, embarrassed.  “Well… I’ll try to wait, anyway.  Don’t keep me hanging too long.  No torturing this time.”  She couldn’t help but smile at that.  He dropped his hands, looking down on her.  “I’m gonna take a shower.”  He pecked her lips, grinned gently, and limped off to the bathroom.

She watched him go, entranced anew by the way he moved, even as stiff and stilted as it was right now.  The lights in the spacious bathroom turned on.  He left the door open, and a moment later, Natasha could hear the shower running.  God, he could make things sound so simple.  _Just talk to me.  Just let me love you.  Just trust me.  Just know it’ll be okay._

_Just marry me._

“Steve?” she called.

He’d only been gone for a moment, a moment that seemed too long, but he came right back out in his underwear.  “What?”

“I know what you’re saying.  I know what you think you need to do.  But I need you to be honest with me,” she said softly.  He looked at her expectantly, waiting as she gathered her thoughts and words.  “Did you mean what you said before?  Do you really think that I…”  _Can be your wife?_ She faltered because it wasn’t just that, even though that was the most pressing thing at the moment.  “That I can be whatever I want to be?”

“I think you’re beautiful, Nat, and stronger than you’ve ever realized.  You can be anything,” he answered.  He offered up a beautiful smile.  “And I’m always honest.”  He held her gaze a moment longer, brimming with nothing less than complete adoration, before going back to the bathroom and leaving her with her thoughts.

* * *

Natasha didn’t know where that left her.  It had certainly confirmed the obvious, she supposed.  Of course Steve had meant his proposal, even as half-unconscious as he’d been when he’d made it the first time.  And of course he was completely sincere, completely confident in her and that this was the right thing for both of them.  Of course he was.  For him, everything was always black and white.  Well-defined choices.  That still bothered her about him, his unerring ability to reduce everything to its simplest, easiest terms.  Right or wrong.  Love and honor.  Respect and responsibility.  That was what it meant to him.  She still didn’t know what any of it meant to her.

And it was so damn stupid.  And cowardly.  But she didn’t give him an answer the whole rest of that day.  Even when Steve emerged from their suite to greet the team, to find them happy and hugely appreciative to see him recovered, she couldn’t manage to come up with a response.  She slept beside him that night (although how he could be tired enough to sleep more was beyond her, but he was.  He was out like a light the minute his head hit the pillow with his arm a heavy, ensnaring weight over her body).  She stared at the ceiling for a long time, thinking and restless.  All the next day she failed as well.  Steve was busy with Tony and Maria, digesting the fall-out from the attack and reluctantly planning the press conference they wanted him to do to soothe the country (and the world for that matter) that the Avengers were ready and able to protect them.  She didn’t go with him to when he went to see Clint.  She didn’t even go with him when Bruce wanted to run some tests on the serum.  She wasn’t avoiding him (not really), but she wasn’t making much of an effort to be with him.  She couldn’t help herself.  Every minute she spent with him was filled with this… this… _anxiety_.  Steve was doing his very best to seem nonchalant about it.  He never mentioned his proposal again, absolutely did not press her about it, but his lack of attention to it somehow made it seem all that much more looming.  She could sense his anxiety, too, and his excitement and his joy and his fear, and that made her own more poignant.  That made the fact that she, once again, did not know what to do much harder to escape.

Even more than getting pregnant, this felt life-changing.  That was silly, but it did.  She knew why.  Getting pregnant hadn’t been a choice.  _This_ was a choice, a huge one.  This was commitment, something with which she had very little experience outside her career and something she knew Steve took very seriously.  This would close any lingering distance between them.  The well-defined boundaries of being co-workers and partners were long gone if they’d ever been there at all, broken by lust and passion and friendship, but marrying him would bust down the last barriers, the last masks she could ever use to separate herself from him.  Marrying him was boldly saying she was prepared to stay loyal to him for the rest of her life when she’d never been that loyal to anyone, not even herself.  It meant she was committing to everything they were together, to him, to truly being the mother of his children, to completely _changing_ who she had been.  It was more than uncharted territory.  It was a new world, a _new life._

She didn’t feel ready for that.

So another day went by.

All of this waiting and worrying and hesitating only fueled her self-doubt.  She was watching Steve and Tony discuss (they were bickering, to be honest, but in a light, amiable way) the press conference that would be happening later that afternoon and whether or not Steve should wear his new uniform to it when it occurred to her that she needed to talk to someone.  The old Black Widow would have ignored and compartmentalized and muddled through.  She couldn’t do that anymore.  And there was really only one person in whom she could confide about this.  One person who she trusted to guide her, to be honest, not to judge or placate her.  She made her way to Clint’s suite, asked JARVIS if he was there, and when the AI answered affirmatively, she knocked on his door.

Surprisingly, it was Sharon who answered.  The other woman looked relaxed, honeyed hair pulled up into a loose pony tail with tendrils around her face.  She was wearing jeans and a white sweater, comfortable clothes with a comfortable expression in her eyes.  “Oh, Natasha.  Hi.  I was just leaving actually.”  She smiled, but her smile slid a little as she looked over Natasha.  “Are you okay?”

Mustering up her normal poise, or even some irritation at the question, was too difficult.  “Yeah, I’m fine.  Can I talk to Clint?”

“Sure,” Sharon said, stepping aside to let her into Clint’s suite.  “He’s in the bedroom.  I’ll, um, I’ll see you later.”  She smiled again disarmingly and stepped out into the hallway, closing the door behind her.

Natasha ventured deeper into the suite.  It looked much like the one she shared with Steve, finely furnished and extravagantly spacious.  The bright afternoon sun was streaming through the huge windows to the left.  “Clint?” she called as she walked toward the bedroom.  She stopped at the door when she saw him standing by the bed, dressed only in pajama pants.  He was looking for a shirt, it seemed, in the messy pile of clothes on top of the blankets.  It had been a long time since she’d seen him like this, unclothed and exposed and vulnerable.  There were scars on him, scars she remembered anew, from fights long passed.  Knife wounds and bullet holes and the marks of the difficult life they led.  She felt uncomfortable staring at him, so she called again.  “Clint?”

He didn’t hear her.  He couldn’t hear her.  So he didn’t turn, rummaging through the laundry a moment more before giving up and heading toward the closet.  Natasha closed her eyes briefly in sadness before brushing it aside.  “Clint,” she said, louder and more forcefully.  Still, he didn’t react.  She walked across the room to him and touched his arm.  “Clint.”

“Oh, Nat,” he said with a gasp, startling and turning.  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d successfully snuck up on him.  He shook his head in exasperation.  “Damn it.  Sorry.  This ear–”  He vaguely gestured at the right one.  “Doesn’t work so good.  And there’s always this ringing…”  He shrugged and sighed.  Just as she’d suspected, the loss was starting to sink into him.  “Ah, well.  Should be grateful.”

“What does Banner think?” Natasha asked, trying to keep her guilt at bay.

“What?”  He winced in frustration.

“Bruce,” she said louder.  “What does he think?”

“Banner?  He’s working on something.  Says it’ll be ready to test in a couple of weeks.”  He gestured out in to the living area.  “Go sit.  I’ll just get dressed and be right out.”

She watched him a moment more as he went into his closet.  She heard him muttering, louder than normal since he probably couldn’t hear himself.  Or maybe he just wanted to ease the tension, because she couldn’t stop a smile.  “What the hell was Stark thinking, buying some of this?”

Turning, she went back out into the sitting area.  She sat on the couch, taking in the room.  A couple plates were littered across the coffee table, probably from dinner last night.  There was a box of pizza, too, and two empty beer bottles.  To say she was surprised was maybe an overstatement.  Before she could really think much about it, though, Clint came out of the bedroom, having found a button-down plaid shirt and black jeans.  He scrubbed his hand through messy hair as he came over and sat in the plush chair across from the couch.  There was an awkward moment of silence between them.  Even though she’d spent some time with Clint over the last few days, it was always shadowed by what he’d done for her and the guilt she had over it.  And, on top of that, Sharon had been with him quite a bit, and frankly and for the first time since she’d known him, she’d felt like she’d been intruding in his life.  She finally relaxed a little, smiling at him.  She spoke slowly, louder than she was comfortable with, for his benefit.  “So what’s up with you and Carter?”

Clint smiled and color actually came to his cheeks, as close as she’d ever seen him come to a blush.  “Nothing, really,” he answered.  Natasha gave him a knowing smirk.  Clint sighed.  “She’s… she’s nice.”  _Nice._   Not something people like them often had a chance to experience.  She was glad that Clint had found at the very least a friend in Sharon (though it seemed like this had progressed beyond friendship).  She’d be lying if it wasn’t a bit because she felt guilty for how she had treated him, left him behind for Steve.  Even if she and Clint really hadn’t been together, it had hurt him.  Mostly she was just relieved he seemed happy and hale despite everything.

Clint eyed her critically, having recovered from his moment of embarrassment.  “What’s up with you and Rogers?”

Her smile slipped a little.  There was no sense in maintaining some sort of façade with him.  He always read her so well.  She released a slow breath to gather her composure.  “He asked me to marry him.”

Clint’s eyebrows arched, and he leaned back in his seat a little.  She’d said that so quietly, but obviously he’d heard it.  “Of course he did,” he said.  “He’s who he is.  You shouldn’t be surprised.”  Part of her wasn’t.  Another part of her would remember her shock at the whisper of his proposal against her cheek as he’d lost consciousness for the rest of her life.  “What did you tell him?”

Natasha was ashamed to answer.  “I haven’t told him anything yet.”

He seemed confused, and that was enough to convince her this was as cowardly and stupid as it felt to be.  “Why not?  You don’t want to marry him?”

She supposed, everything else aside, that was the only question that really mattered.  “I don’t know.”

Clint said nothing to that for a moment.  “Is it him?”

“No,” she said quickly, emphatically.  “No.”

“Then it’s you.”

It was.  “Yes.”  She sighed.  “I…  I don’t think he realizes what he’s asking.  He doesn’t know what he’s getting himself into.  You know me, in some ways better than he ever will.  You know what we are.  We’re… damaged goods.  Really damaged.”  He didn’t argue with that.  “And we both know what he is.”  She shook her head.  “It was one thing to live this dream life where we could be together and there’d be no consequences and no one to bother us…  But that was a dream.  A fantasy.  And now–”

“Nat, you’re going to have his kids,” Clint said.  “I think you should be way past these kinds of doubts.”

She paused.  Hearing Clint say that made it so sharply real.  Was there even a choice?  Or was she yet again backed into a corner with her future dictated for her?  _Stop it.  This is stupid._   “You want to know what I think?”  Clint’s quiet voice drew her from her thoughts.  He leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his thighs.  “Rogers is a good man.  What he did for you, for me…  He’s Captain America, and he lives up to that every day.”

“I know,” she said so softly he probably couldn’t hear her. 

“You and me…  We don’t get chances like this.  You know that.  Don’t throw it away.  Don’t even ask why you’re getting it.  Just take it.  Take the chance to start over.  That’s what it is.  A chance to start over.  And he’s giving it to you, with both arms open.”  That made her look down, hiding the rush of heat to her face.  “It’s like I told you before.  This is love.  It’s believing in someone else no matter what.  He believes in you.  And he makes you whole.”

“I know.”

“So marry him.  Stop thinking so much.  Stop worrying.  Stop _running_.  Let him make you happy.”

It couldn’t be that simple.  Could it?

 _It is._   Maybe Steve was right.  He loved her.  She loved him.  What else did they need, really?  So what if he was Captain America and she was Black Widow?  So what if they were opposites, different and dangerous and unpredictable?  The foundation of everything they shared was strong, strong because it had been forged in fire.  They’d survived something that should have completely torn them apart, survived it and renewed and restored themselves and everything they had with one another.  She’d always known this was where she was meant to be, from the first moment she’d laid eyes on Steve as her new partner in Fury’s office more than a year ago.  She’d lied to herself for so long, made herself believe something else, convinced herself that it was nothing and he was nothing to her when nothing could be further from the truth.  She’d known _then_.  That was how strong what she felt for him was.  That was love.  _I love him._   Why couldn’t it work?  Why couldn’t they be together, be a family?

Why shouldn’t she be his wife?

Clint stood up and walked across the living area to her.  He smiled.  “I think he knows exactly what he’s getting into.  I think he always has.”  She gave a short breath at that, nodding and smiling herself.  He stood over her and reached out his hand.  “And I think we could all use a chance to start over.”

She stared up at him before taking his hand.  She let him pull her to her feet, wrap her in his arms.  The hug was warm and familiar, the same as it always was despite everything that had happened to them both.  She supposed this was what she’d come for.  Not to figure out her answer.  She’d come for Clint’s comfort.  His support.  His strength to help her simply realize what she’d known all along.  “You okay now?” came his soft voice in her ear.

“Yeah.”  _I’m fine._   “Thanks, Clint.”  _For everything.  Everything._

She was worried a moment he hadn’t heard her, but he had.  He always did.  And he always understood what she couldn’t say.  He squeezed her against him.  “Always, Nat.”

* * *

She went down to the lobby.  They were preparing for the press conference.  Apparently Tony had won the uniform debate, because Captain America stood in all of his finery in an alcove to the side, tucked away for the moment from the loud fuss beyond.  He was decked out in the dark blue combat suit trimmed in red that Tony had designed for him with the Avengers logo sitting proudly on his arm.  His shield was on his back, the star shining so brightly in the lights of the lobby.  His face was calm, his hair neatly brushed, eyes clear and as deeply blue as his outfit.  He was strong, calm, and beautiful.  He seemed untouched, like all the horrors of Crimea had never happened, like the STRIKE Team had never tortured him, like HYDRA and SHIELD and the Winter Soldier had never broken him.  Maybe they never had, or if they had, he’d been put back together.  By her.  By himself.  By their children growing inside her.  She could hardly believe how much seeing him like this eased her.  He looked serene, so steadfast, so powerful.  Indomitable.  Invincible.  Now more than ever before.

Iron Man stood next to him, his helmet also under his arm, and on Steve’s other side, Thor was speaking to him softly.  Hill was behind them, looking over some things on her StarkPad.  A veritable flood of reporters and spectators were crowding the expansive area, held back by Stark’s head bodyguard and Stark Industries security personnel.  Any minute now, Captain America and Iron Man were going to go out there and proclaim that the Avengers were assembled and ready to safeguard the world from evil and fight the battles no one else could.

Natasha lingered behind them, hesitant.  But she didn’t hide for long.  Steve was looking around.  She could see he was nervous, even though he was hiding it well.  His gaze wandered in her direction, and at first he didn’t seem to notice her.  But then he realized she was there, and his face slipped from a tense expression of determination to soft surprise.  “Nat.”  The others looked to her, equally shocked to see her this close to the mess of the media beyond.  “Excuse me for a minute, guys,” Steve said, stepping away from the group.

“Cap, it’s almost time,” Tony reminded curtly.  “Cap!”

“Just a minute, okay?”  Steve briskly walked over to her.  She watched him, watched his eyes take her in, watch his lips turn in a tentative smile.  “Are you alright?” he asked quietly, a bit breathless.  Over the noise in the lobby and the thundering of her own heart, she could hardly hear his voice.  “Nat?”

She released a slow breath, gathering her composure.  She was Black Widow.  She’d survived the horrors of the Red Room, fought the Winter Soldier, stood strong against Omega Red.  She’d run missions for SHIELD, battled the Chitauri with the Avengers, faced and bested a demented god.  She could do this.  He was waiting.  _Waiting for her._   “Yes,” she whispered.  She swallowed through dry throat and made her voice stronger.  _“Yes.”_

And if she had to, she could live on the memory of this moment forever.  The look on his face.  The absolute _elation_ in his eyes.  He released a small breath, the fullness of his lower lip tight under his teeth like he was trying to stop it from quivering.  “Okay,” he said, his voice thick and husky with emotion.

“Okay?” she repeated, shaking her head at him.  “That’s it?  Just okay?”

The press could probably see them, some of the reporters at any rate, and the entirety of the team was watching, but that didn’t stop him from dropping down onto one knee again.  His fingers had apparently slipped into one of the pockets of his uniform, and he pulled out the ring.  It was simple and straightforward, just like he was, but extremely high quality.  The band was silver or platinum, with a modestly sized square-cut diamond in its center flanked by two smaller stones on either side.  She’d handled, even worn, jewelry far more lavish than this, but it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen because he’d chosen it.  He’d chosen it for her.

But what in the world was he doing?  “Steve, what…  I already said yes,” she gasped.

“Say it again,” he replied, offering the ring up to her, chivalrous and gentlemanly and everything he wanted to be for her.  “Say it again because you deserve this done right.  Natasha, will you marry me?”

“Yes,” she said, worried about the cameras flashing and the team watching but not worried enough to care.  Losing herself in this monumental moment he was creating for her.  Giving in to a fantasy she’d never known she’d so desperately wanted until now.

“Say it again,” he softly implored, taking left her hand.

She could hardly find her voice.  “Yes.”

“Again?  Please.”

_“Yes.”_

“Never stop saying it.”  His hands were warm, callused, and steady as he carefully slid the ring up her finger, gently brushing it over her knuckle.  “Never, Nat.”  The ring fit perfectly.  She stared at it, watched the light shimmer in the stones, watching how his hand, so large and sinewy, folded into hers.  It fit so well with hers.  She hadn’t ever noticed that before, which was passing strange.  She hadn’t seen just how well they fit together.

With some effort she returned her gaze to his face.  He was still kneeling in front of her.  His eyes were depthless pools of a clear, blue sky.  “Never stop telling me I’m yours.”

The air left her lungs in a whisper, and her heart ached with so much _feeling_ that she couldn’t do anything but _love_ him.  “Never,” she promised.  “You’re mine.”

He was on his feet in an exhilarated jump, sweeping his fingers across her cheeks and into her hair and pulling her tightly to him.  She planted her hands on his chest, curling them into the fabric of his new uniform, each one alongside the silver star over his heart.  He kissed her.  Every bit of his relief and euphoria and adoration was behind that kiss, so deep and passionate and powerful.  He was giving her every part of himself, everything he had to give.  His body and mind and heart and soul.  _Everything._

There was laughter and something low and thankful that sounded like “Way to go, Cap” and a murmur of surprise.  A peel of cheering rose over the lobby.  “Alright, everyone, just hold on a minute.  Cool down.  Yeah, let’s just calm down.”  That was Tony.  He was moving to the crowd, standing up to address them as Thor blocked the media’s view.  “Bear with us a minute here while Captain America…”

Natasha didn’t hear anything more.  There was nothing to hear, nothing to see, nothing aside from Steve.  She melted into him, into his strong chest and gentle hands and wondrous lips.  He moved away for a breath, but he didn’t say anything.  He just smiled at her, and that one smile was more of a promise than any of the many promises he’d made to her since they’d met.  She smiled back, cupped his face tenderly in her hands, and kissed him again.  And again.  As deeply as she could.  As _much_ as she could.  She laughed into his mouth as he lifted her against him and spun them both, suddenly so _happy_ that she couldn’t contain it no matter how she tried.  She laughed and wrapped her legs around his waist and held him tight.  She would never let him go again. _Never._

He was hers.  She was his.  That was exactly what she _wanted_ to be.

And surrendering herself to him was sweeter than she’d ever imagined.


	16. Chapter 16

Two days later, they were having a wedding.

Despite being the one who’d pushed them to get married, Steve was positively terrified.  He hadn’t expected things to happen so fast, but honestly there was no reason for them not to.  Natasha had no family.  He had no family.  Everyone about whom they cared was already there in New York.  They had nothing else.  They were both groundless, homeless, anchorless.  Therefore, there was no reason to wait, and with Tony throwing things together, money was no impediment or cause for delay.  Not that either of them wanted anything extravagant.  When Stark mentioned more exotic locations (like any place outside of the safety of Stark Tower), Natasha adamantly refused.  The press and the internet were already buzzing, having caught quite a few pictures of Captain America down on one knee for _someone_ , but that coupled with Black Widow’s heroics during the battle and her verification of her relationship with Steve during the Senate Armed Services Committee almost a month ago led to only one conclusion.  Therefore, doing anything to garner media attention was strictly prohibited, and Tony reeled in his wallet.  It was going to be a small service on the roof of the tower, if the weather permitted, in the presence of their friends and teammates, and that was it.  Stark’s girlfriend, Pepper Potts, had returned from Malibu yesterday at Tony’s behest to help Natasha, and though Natasha wasn’t too pleased with the idea, she’d gone along with it.  She and Pepper were more than acquaintances though not quite friends from Natasha’s time posing as a Stark Industries’ employee.  And Tony had sent his personal tailor up to measure Steve for a suit, which would no doubt end up being the most expensive set of clothing Steve had ever owned.  They’d rushed everything without missing a stitch (literally), and Steve was reminded yet again that it wasn’t so bad having a billionaire for a friend (most of the time).

Pepper had taken care of a lot of the other things.  Flowers.  Food.  She’d found someone willing to perform the ceremony, someone who would keep everything quiet and secret.  Natasha held no allegiance to any religion, but Steve still believed enough to want it conducted by a minister and she was alright with that.  In no time at all, it was the night before the wedding.  Steve was spending it in Sam’s suite in the guest room; it was old-fashioned and superstitious, but he didn’t want to see Natasha before they got married.  She’d told him he was being ridiculous.  He’d told her if they were doing this, he was going to do it right and that included following all stupid old-wives tales and everything else that was utter nonsense.  Nothing else about who they were and what they had together was traditional: they were superheroes, they’d just survived six months of nightmares upon nightmares, and (not to mention) Natasha was almost four months pregnant.  He wanted to cling to some sense of normalcy, even though it was a bit silly, and she indulged him.

So he left Natasha to spend the night at Sam’s.  And before he even hung his suit in the closet and set his bag down in Sam’s guest room, there was a knock at the door to the suite.  Sam opened it to reveal Tony.  And Thor and Bruce and Clint.  And a veritable keg of beer and cases full of liquor.  He couldn’t get married without some sort of bachelor party, according to Tony, so the inventor had taken the liberty of arranging it.  “Say the word,” he said, “and strippers galore.”  Steve didn’t say the word, but there was no turning them away no matter how tired he was and how much he’d wanted a quiet evening, and he didn’t feel up to hurting anyone’s feelings or bruising any egos at any rate, so in they all came.  Pizza was ordered.  Beer was distributed.  Steve reminded Tony that he couldn’t get drunk, even as Stark poured shot after shot in front of him.  He humored the other man and tried, much to the amusement of the others, knocking back each drink in rapid succession to no avail.  Thor clapped him on the back hard enough to nearly topple him, boldly proclaiming that if he was on Asgard, he would not prove so resilient to the power of their mead.  Steve smiled and settled down to eat with the group.

It turned out to be a really nice evening, even without the strippers and with all the ribbing and noise.  They talked shop a little; the press conference had been a roaring success, likely more due to the impromptu proposal caught on film right before it than anything Steve or Tony had had to say, but good press was good press.  In the end, the pundits were proclaiming that the public was very much behind the Avengers, going so far as to announce that America hadn’t been so firmly supportive of _anything_ in recent memory.  Even President Ellis had come out to thank them for their recent efforts and declare that the American people were indebted to them for their protection, now and in the future.  That was a significant source of good cheer.  Tony went over some plans for changes to the Tower, upgrades to equipment, and even some thoughts about a new Avengers quinjet, before Thor demanded they cease this discussion of work matters and instead turn to the more enjoyable topics.  And that turned out to be a bunch of talk about nothing, about what they’d done since the Battle of New York, catching up and “shooting the shit”, as Clint put it.  Pizza was devoured.  Liquor was imbibed in excess.  The drunker they got, the less appropriate the conversation became, and it reminded Steve all too much of the war, of the Howling Commandos celebrating around a campfire after a long fought battle or difficult mission.  He’d been the only sober one then, too, but he’d never minded much.  He was their captain, and the responsible part of him never felt it was appropriate of him to get so completely inebriated along with his men.  More than that, though, it let him appreciate them like this, when they were loose and laughing.  As he watched Tony slur some sort of science to Bruce and Thor loudly regale a tale of Asgardian might to a laughing Sam and Clint, he realized his new team wasn’t so different from his old one.

They left way too late.  Steve went to bed feeling uncomfortably full for once and nervous and not even a bit buzzed, much to his chagrin.  Jittery and restless, he lay awake for a long time.  He didn’t know why.  He’d never been so sure of anything like he was certain about this, about her.  He hadn’t been lying to Natasha when he’d told her this had never been something he’d expected, but not much in his life had gone the way he’d planned.  Part of him still felt like a scrawny, sick kid from Brooklyn and always would, whose choices had been few and whose prospects had been poor.  Part of him couldn’t believe he was here, that everything had happened exactly as it had, that this road would twist and meander to lead him to Natasha’s side.  This wasn’t something he could have predicted, but it was somehow just what he wanted, where he needed to be.  Still, he couldn’t help but lay there and think of Peggy.  If he hadn’t gone down with the _Valkyrie,_ if there had been some other way to defeat Schmidt, would he have married her?  Would he have been the father of her children?  If fate had twisted another way, would he have been laying in a bed like this, nerves tense and electrified, on the night before a very different wedding?  There was no sense in wondering.  He was here and he was happier than he had any reason to be.  He still loved Peggy and he always would, but imagining her red lips in a smile and her dark eyes so deeply staring into his…  It wasn’t as sharp as the image had been once.  He couldn’t see her so clearly now when there’d been a time only a few short months ago that her face had been _all_ he’d been able to see.  Natasha was the reason why.  She’d done so much more than just fill a void in his heart.  She’d reminded him what it was like to love, to live, to look past the haunting ghosts of what he’d lost and the painful dreams of what could have been and see himself in a new world.  He didn’t think Natasha knew what she’d done for him.  And it started far before Crimea, with her easy, compassionate smiles and the tender hand on his shoulder when he’d been down and the gentle teasing that reminded him to not take everything so seriously.  That reminded him there were still things worth fighting for, worth living for.

_“Thank her for me.  For taking care of you.  For being what I couldn’t be for you.”_

If it took the rest of his life, he would make sure Natasha knew she was appreciated.  Not just appreciated.  _Cherished._

He finally fell asleep.  And he slept in, which was extremely unusual, but he was still feeling a tad drained from his fight with Omega Red and saving Clint’s life.  There was no reason to get up early, so he took the rare occasion to indulge, covering his head and face with the blanket, dozing, and pointedly ignoring the daylight.  Eventually he grew tired of his own lethargy and got up to take a shower.  He stood at the vanity afterward, shaving and trying to keep himself from thinking too much.  The wedding wasn’t until the early afternoon, so getting dressed for it now seemed silly, even if he kept anxiously glancing at his suit in the bag.  Instead he chose a pair of jeans and a gray long-sleeve shirt.  And he could have sat around the rest of the morning and waited, but a few minutes of that proved to be too much.  So he went down to the lobby.  “JARVIS, I’m going out for a little while in case anyone asks.”

“Of course, Captain,” the AI responded.  “Need I remind you not to be late to your own wedding?”

Steve smiled faintly as he paused at the doors to the Tower.  “Probably wouldn’t hurt.”

“Then do not be late.”

It wasn’t that hard to get to Brooklyn.  It was Sunday morning, and the city was quiet and sedate.  He stepped out of the taxi, paid the driver (who thankfully hadn’t recognized him), and found himself wandering around streets that seemed so familiar but weren’t.  He’d been back to Brooklyn a few times since waking up in the future but not recently, and every visit before had been… difficult to say the least.  As he walked, he saw things he hadn’t noticed the last couple of trips.  Different buildings.  Different people.  He realized why.  When he looked around now, at the brownstones and coffee shops and street corners, he didn’t see the past clinging to everything.  He didn’t see what was gone in place of what was there.  If he tried, he could picture the scenes from his past down to the smallest details, but the urge to do that, to lose himself in those memories, simply wasn’t there.  Just like with Peggy, it wasn’t haunting him anymore.

Every time he’d done this, he always ended up in the same place.  Cadman Plaza Park at the World War II memorial.  And every time, he searched the smooth stone for Bucky’s name.  It was still there, among the thousands of other names (including his own) of men who’d served and died for their country during the fight.  He knew exactly where it was on the wall.  _James Buchanan Barnes._   The party last night, as fun as it had been, had still felt a little empty.  He’d never imagined when they’d been teenage boys and young men together that he’d be the one to be getting married.  Bucky had been the looker, the charmer, the one with a girl (or two) on his arm every night.  And Bucky had joked about it a lot, that the two of them would end up being grumpy old men together because how could Bucky ever tie the knot with a dame if Steve always needed him to look after his sorry ass?  But, even if he ever found someone, he’d always imagined that Bucky would _be there_.  Be at his side.  Stand up for him.  And Bucky was gone again, out somewhere in the world.

He hadn’t meant to get maudlin about it (or about anything, really – this was his wedding day, for crying out loud), but he spent a few minutes staring at Bucky’s name and fighting the urge to _go find him_ because it hurt not knowing where he was and what might be happening to him.  It was the same hurt, the same guilt, that had driven him to leave to track down the Winter Soldier in the first place.  It had been tempered by the things he’d learned and realized this last week, but right then, the pain turned into a dull ache that left him unsettled.  Honestly, a part of him didn’t want to do this without Bucky.  Despite everything Bucky had done to him as the Winter Soldier, despite what he had done to Natasha, he was still Steve’s best friend, the closest thing he had to a family.

 _You’re making a new family._   A new team.  A new life.  The life Natasha had helped him build in this world.  And Bucky would come back when he was ready.  Steve knew a thing or two about keeping promises, and he’d learned those things from Bucky.  He’d find his way home.

And it was time for Steve to do the same.  The autumn breeze was crisp as the sky clouded over.  He hoped it wouldn’t rain as he returned to the Tower and had JARVIS take him back to Sam’s suite.  When he walked inside, Sam was sitting and watching TV but clearly waiting for him.  “Hey,” he said, standing up immediately and tossing the remote to the couch.  “Where you been?”

“Just… walking,” Steve said.

“Everything okay?” Sam asked, not entirely convinced.

Steve grinned.  “Sure.”  He walked past Sam, punching him lightly in the arm as he did.  “You worry too much.”

Sam grunted a chuckle.  “One of us has to.”

Steve grinned wider.  “Gonna get dressed.”

“Alright.”

Back in his bedroom, he took off his sneakers and coat.  His suit was waiting where he’d left it in the closet, and drawing a deep breath, he went to it and unzipped the bag.  He didn’t think much as he changed.  His stomach roiled.  He found it a tad difficult to breathe, similar to when he’d had asthma attacks when he’d been a kid, but not quite the same.  Scary for entirely different reasons.  He was buttoning up his shirt when there was a knock at the door.  “You decent?  Not that I haven’t seen it, I guess.  But I’d rather not see it again, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Yeah,” Steve answered with half an embarrassed laugh.

Sam pushed opened the door and came in wearing a suit himself.  His was gray with a light blue dress shirt and a silver tie.  “Here.  I brought some options.”  He held up his hand and offered up a few ties.  He ventured closer, inspecting them himself.  “I’m thinking the blue.”

Steve appraised himself in the huge, floor-length mirror in the bedroom.  The suit was very nice, black and form-fitting.  He took the jacket off again to put on his tie.  “You don’t have to do this.”

Sam didn’t even look up, checking the other ties over as he considered the best one.  “Sure I do.  Someone has to.  And I know you’re missing the guy you’d like to have here with you, so I can fill in.”

Steve would probably never understand what he’d done to deserve a friend as loyal as Sam.  How could he have known?  He sighed softly, trying to find the words to express how much he appreciated _everything_ Sam had done for him.  This wasn’t simply lending his aid.  This wasn’t just letting them hide at his house or helping Natasha get to New York or risking his life in a fight not his own.  It wasn’t even going with him on their dangerous, wild goose chase across Europe into HYDRA’s deepest and darkest secrets.  Sam had truly been his friend, a stalwart supporter, when he’d desperately needed one.  Sam had let him do what he thought he needed to do, sticking by him even though it had been awful and rough for them both.  That sort of loyalty was hard to come by.  “You’re not filling in,” Steve finally said.  “You never have been, you know.”

Somehow that was enough.  Sam read people like they were open books.  He smiled, grateful and maybe even a little bashful.  “I know.”  He set the other ties to the bed and went to get Steve’s dress shoes from the box by the bag for the suit.  He threw the socks at Steve, who caught them easily, and brought the shoes over.  “Kind of nice having a wingman again.”

Warmth spread in Steve’s chest as he sat down on the edge of his bed and pulled his socks on.  He dipped his head to hide the size of his smile, which was pretty big.  “Who said anything about me being your wingman?  I think you’re mine.”

“Nope.”

“I seem to recall you sayin’ that you do everything I do, only slower.”

“You looked like you needed the pick-me-up.”  Sam smiled broadly.  “And some wingman you are.  All I wanted was for you to make me look good in front of the girl at the VA.  Still waiting on that, by the way.”

“Next time I’m in DC.”  That gave Steve pause and an uncomfortable feeling churned in his stomach.  “Are you going back?  To DC, I mean.”

Sam shrugged, handing Steve his shoes.  “I don’t know, to be honest.  Thought I’d hang around for a bit.  You know, just in case.  Been sort of an unofficial Avenger for a bit, but I think Stark’s looking to change that.  Wants the Falcon to fly again.”  Somehow with all that had happened over the last couple of weeks, Steve hadn’t heard about that.  He felt… relieved.  Really relieved.  And happy.  “I suppose I gotta ask the captain if it’s okay that I join the team, though.”

Steve looked up at him, finishing with his shoes.  “Are you kidding?  I thought you’d already joined.”

Sam smiled, obviously relieved himself though there’d been no reason to doubt.  If Sam had felt the need to prove that he’d belonged (which he’d never needed to do, and Steve hoped he knew that), he’d done so repeatedly.  Not that he needed to give up any chance of a normal life for him, but Steve was still so glad he was there.

Steve drew a deep breath, standing up and resisting the urge to wipe his suddenly sweaty palms against his thighs.  He’d almost forgotten what was about to happen.  He glanced at the clock beside the bed.  One hour.

Sam didn’t miss his look.  “You ready for this?”

“Yes.”  He tried to sound firm and confident, like Captain America.  Captain America wasn’t the one getting married.  Not really.  “No.”

Sam grasped his shoulder, offering the blue tie again.  “You should be.”  That was easier said than done.  Again, it wasn’t any doubt about what he was doing.  But this was monumental, and he couldn’t help the nausea bothering him or the sweat collecting under his shirt or the way it was so damn hard to be still.  “Look, man, I don’t know if there’s such a thing as fate.  But every minute you spent apart from her felt like the stars were crossed or something.  I could see how it was killing you.”  Steve winced.  So much of the time they’d spent in Europe was a shameful and disturbing blur, like a dark part of his life his brain was repressing because it was too painful.  But he remembered that acutely.  Needing Natasha.  Aching for Natasha.  Sam noticed the slight look of distress and smiled comfortingly.  “You told me back in DC before everything got so bad that she makes you happy.  I knew it then, and I know it now.  So I’m glad this is where it ends.  Begins.  Both, I guess.”

Steve nodded.  “Me, too.”

“So wear the blue one.  You’re kind of oblivious, but I think she has a thing for you in blue.”

“I’m not oblivious.  I know that.  That’s why I wear a lot of blue, Sam.”

“That’s lame, you know.”  Sam handed him the tie.  He appraised Steve evenly.  “You guys got through some really horrible stuff together.  If that’s not love and trust, I don’t know what is.”

Something irked Steve about that, not that it wasn’t true, but because it was.  He had a flash of Natasha not telling him about Bucky.  He understood why she’d done it now, but…  “I’ll be right back.”

He was running out the door without his tie or his jacket and still looking pretty fantastically not ready.  “Steve!  Dude, where are you – you’re getting married in an hour!”

“I know!” he called back from the door to the suite.

He was jogging down the hall (which he shouldn’t be doing; he could practically _feel_ his suit wrinkling around him, and it wasn’t doing his roiling stomach any favors).  But he was down a floor and in front of his suite with Natasha before he even thought twice about it.  “Captain, might I remind you that it is considered bad luck to–”

“Yes, I know, JARVIS.”

The AI paused a moment but spoke again when Steve’s hand was poised to knock.  “Then may I tell you that if you open that door, Mr. Stark will come into some money.  A rather paltry amount for him, but I believe the inflation of his pride will more than compensate.”

Steve’s brow furrowed.  “What?  He bet that I wouldn’t–”

“Make it, sir.  As he put it, if he was ‘tapping’ that, no superstitious bull–”

“I get it.”  He knocked anyway.

A moment later, the door opened.  Natasha stood there, dressed in a blush robe.  Her hair was effortlessly tousled and wavy, like she’d already set it into loose curls and let them go, and her make-up was done.  He never liked women in much make-up, but this…  Her lips were softly pink.  Her skin was flawless.  And her eyes…  He couldn’t look anywhere else.  She was beautiful.  And annoyed at him.  “Seriously?  After all this?”  She dropped her hands to her hips and obstinately shook her head.  “I’m not letting you in.  You denied me last night because you’re a ridiculous idiot.  You don’t get to get some one hour before our wedding.”

She was back to herself.  So much so.  He’d noticed it yesterday.  The darkness was still there, her own scars and nightmares, but it was lessened to the point where he could hardly see it.  She’d been light, breezy, and confident.  Flirty.  Stunningly powerful and gorgeous.  The woman she’d been back before Brushov had gotten his hands on her again and SHIELD had been torn out from under her.  Black Widow, but so much more.  He’d missed it greatly, and having it again, knowing that he was bringing it out of her again…  It took his breath away.

“I, uh…”  He stammered like a damn fool.  “Wow.”

“I’m not dressed.”

He decided there was nothing on God’s green earth that could make her look better than she looked right now.  “Doesn’t matter.”

“Flattery is not getting you in here.”

“I need to give you something.”

Her eyes actually dropped to his crotch, and she cocked an eyebrow in something that was a hungry show of interest and invitation despite all of her refusals.  All his blood went south, despite everything else.  He’d forgotten this.  Forgotten how with _just one look_ she had him flustered and helpless and falling over himself to eat right out of her palm.  “That’s not it,” he managed after he gathered himself.  _Eyes on the prize, Rogers._   “It’s something else.  Can I come in?  Please?”

Her sultry eyes shifted to concern.  She stepped aside and let him into their suite.  He went right through the living room to their bedroom, where the huge bed wasn’t dressed and there were a few clothes lying about.  The evidence of her getting ready was everywhere, and he purposefully averted his eyes from the slip of white he saw hanging from a rack on the other side of the room and went straight to their closet.  In the back under one of his jackets were the two files, precisely where he had left them after the Avengers had rescued them from Russia.  His fingers brushed over Bucky’s file as he pulled Natasha’s free, and that small sense of melancholy returned for a moment.  He shook it away and went out to her.

“I know this probably isn’t the best time for this.  To be honest, with everything that happened, I forgot about it, and, well, I didn’t feel right not telling you about it right away so…”  He offered up a sheepish smile.  “Here.”  He handed her the thick file.

“What’s this?” she asked, taking it.  She was still smiling and trying to be sly with him, but he could see her apprehension.  “Early wedding present?  All the love letters you wrote for me while you were in Europe?”

“I wish,” he responded regretfully.  “When I was in Moscow looking for you, I found this.  It was in an archive for the Red Room.”  She stared at the folder, at the writing in red on the cover that dictated her name and serial numbers and dates.  She seemed lost, shocked and maybe even aghast, and all the joviality slipped from her face one blink at a time.  Suddenly he wondered if this had been a good idea.  That darkness was coming back to her eyes.  “I couldn’t find you, so I was going to look through it for answers.  But I didn’t.”  She looked up at him, and he smiled.  “I just realized I already knew everything I needed to know about you.”

She gave a throaty, little laugh, but she didn’t open the file, staring at it with a mixture of dread and horror on her face.  “I told you,” she managed.  “Flattery doesn’t work on me.  Much.”

“I just wanted you to have this.  I know you still have questions about…  Well, maybe there are answers in there.”

She surprised him by shaking her head and handing it back.  “Thanks, but I don’t want it.”

“Nat?”

“I’m going forward,” she said with as much certainty as he’d ever heard from her.  “Forward, not back.”

He knew the feeling.  But he also knew that if she threw this opportunity away, it would haunt her and she would regret it.  She’d told him months ago after Crimea that she had questions about her past, about her parents, about what Brushov had done to her.  This file could tell her some of that, maybe not fill the gaps completely, but provide _something_ at least.  “Just because you want the future doesn’t mean you need to forget the past.”

“Steve…”

“Take it.  Read it if you want to.  When you’re ready,” he said.  “This gives you a choice.  I don’t want you to throw it away.  That’s not what I want for you.  Black Widow is yours.  You do with her what you think is best.”

She glanced between the folder and him.  Eventually, her lips shifted into a small smile and she nodded.  She took the folder back and leaned over to the vanity where she set it next to his dog tags.  “Not today.”

“No, not today.”  He tipped his head toward his dog tags, eager to change the subject.  “You going to wear those?”

She came back to him, spending a second looking him over before wrapping her arms around his waist.  She shook her head.  “Nah.  I think you might be giving me something better.”

“Think so?”

“Know so.”

He chuckled and held her for a minute, tucking her against him.  She smelled like flowers, light and airy, and he breathed deeply and closed his eyes for a second.  She shifted and leaned back, tipping her face upward, eyes slipping shut as she waited for him to kiss her.  He couldn’t help but feel a little smug that he had her every bit as addicted to him as he was to her.  He grasped her chin gently and kept her expectantly waiting until she got confused and frustrated and opened her eyes to slits to see what he was doing.  “Nope.  Not yet,” he said firmly.  “Bad luck.”

“Oh, God.  You’re a jerk,” she said in a huff, pushing him away.  “You already cost me twenty bucks today.”

He sputtered, “ _You_ were the one who bet Stark?”

“Yep.  Tony thinks with his little Iron Man all the time.”  She smirked.  “I know you better than he does.  You’re the most stubborn person ever, and once you get something in your head…  Morals and scruples win out every time.”  Her smoldering gaze drifted appreciatively up and down his body.  He knew that look.

He swallowed.  “You must not have been that sure if it’s only twenty bucks.”

She shrugged and bit her lower lip a little.  “Well, morals and scruples win most of the time.”  The heat pooling in his stomach sunk even lower again.  “Lucky for me.”

The temptation was almost too much.  “Nobody knows I’m here.  JARVIS won’t tell Tony.”

“Tell Mr. Stark about what, Captain?”  The AI sounded positively conspiratorial.

Natasha laughed.  “Get out of here, Rogers.”

He smiled and headed back out of the bedroom.  He paused at the door and looked back at her, committing this image of her, stunning and vibrant and _his_ , to memory.  He didn’t need the serum to make it vivid and lasting.  He’d think of it forever.  “See you in an hour?”  It was stupid, but he just wanted to hear her say it.

She read him so easily.  Always had.  Her smile was teasing, but not entirely.  It was sincere.  Sweet.  A promise.  “Go away and let me get ready.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

* * *

It didn’t rain.  The sun actually came out, so it was bright and warm and pleasant on the top of Stark Tower.  The Avengers logo was glowing a greenish blue in the afternoon light.  Somebody had come up and decorated the railings of the Tower’s helipad with flowers, a fall assortment of mums, lilies, chrysanthemums, and other types Steve could begin to name.  It was a flourish of deep purples and golden oranges and reds as deep as wine.  The garland was exquisitely crafted, interwoven with green leaves and white tulle.  If Steve hadn’t been so completely beside himself with anxiety, he’d have made a mental note to thank Pepper later for taking such care to make this into a wedding instead of just a ceremony.  As it was, keeping the contents of his stomach firmly where he wanted them was a full-time commitment.  Especially since Natasha was a couple minutes late.

Sam was beside him.  He seemed nervous, too, though not so much as to not be amused by Steve’s fidgeting and pallor.  “Relax, Rogers,” Tony said, dressed richly in a black blazer, a red shirt, and nice slacks.  He had sunglasses on and a glass of champagne already.  “She’ll be here.  She’s kind of biologically committed to you at this point.  You know, with the double buns in the oven.  Mini-Cap and Cap-ette.”  Sam glared at him.  Tony had a mock expression of shame on his face.  “What?  Was it supposed to be a secret?”

“Stark, anyone ever tell you you talk too much?” Sam asked, not entirely facetiously.

“Do you have any idea how late to that game you are, Wilson?” Tony returned.

“This is hardly the time for bickering,” Thor reminded.  He, too, was dressed in a suit with a red tie.  His hair was neatly brushed and tied at the back of his neck.  “Though I do hope she hurries.  I find this… Midgardian formal wear uncomfortable.”  He reached for the tie around his neck like he wanted to loosen it before stopping himself.

“Think that’s bad,” Bruce commented dryly, “try a tuxedo.”

The group of men chatted more, but Steve had a hard time focusing on what they were saying.  Sharon and Maria were on the other side of the pad.  Clint was with them, and the women were speaking slowly and louder than normal for his benefit.  The minister was talking to Pepper; clearly he was a long-time friend of some sort if Pepper’s easy laugh and hand on his arm was any indication.  The man seemed like a nice sort, an older fellow who was fairly shocked at where he was and what he was doing but was putting forth an admirable effort at hiding it.  Steve watched them a moment before shifting his weight again.  God, he felt like he was on the verge of a panic attack or something.  His heart was pounding, he felt like he couldn’t breathe deeply enough, and he was clammy and sweaty and going out of his mind.  For one horrific second, he caved in and worried, dropping his gaze to his shoes.  What if she wasn’t sure?  What if she was changing her mind?  What if–

The sliding doors at the other end of the helipad opened.  Everyone stopped talking and turned around.  Steve looked up.  Natasha was there, hesitating at first but only for a moment.  She was dressed in white, a simple gown made of silk and organza in soft, sheer layers that flowed behind her when she walked.  Her shoulders were bare save for two thin straps, the cut of the bodice alluring but chaste, and the dress somehow hugged her slim form in all of the right places while draping around her.  She wasn’t wearing a veil, just her hair loose and free in the breeze.  She was stunning, graceful and pure, _pure_ despite who she was and what she’d done.  Purity for _him_ , honesty and openness.  Angelic, but wild and somehow untamed.  Everything she was.  And when she met his gaze, she smiled timidly.  He smiled back.

She came across the way, carrying bouquet of autumn flowers.  Tony, Sam, and Thor moved aside so she could stand next to Steve.  And she did, smiling more confidently now that she was there with him.  She handed her bouquet to Stark, who looked surprised but didn’t complain, and took both of Steve’s hands in her own.  “Ready?” she asked softly.

He could hardly find his voice.  “Yeah.  You?”

It was like any other day, like a thousand before this, the moments prior to a mission or just as they left his apartment to go out or when they headed into a battle.  “Yeah.”

Steve didn’t remember too much after that.  Nothing aside from the feeling of her hands in his, the way the breeze brushed through her fiery auburn hair and set her dress dancing around her.  The minister was talking, and he heard the words, but it felt distant, like the world was gone save for him and her.  She was watching him.  Her eyes, glittering and depthless, never left his.  She was the picture of poise now, fluid like a river, as strong as the wind, and he was lost in her.

Eventually the minister announced it was time to say their vows.  Steve had been continually thinking about what he would tell her for two days, mulling it over, trying to find the perfect words.  Now it came to it, and he couldn’t remember anything he’d planned.  He couldn’t breathe again, and when he did, he could make his mouth and tongue and throat work.  He couldn’t make his voice come _at all_ at first.  But it did.  “Natasha,” he said, gathering himself.  He swept his thumbs over her knuckles.  “Nat.  There hasn’t been a moment in the last two years where I haven’t wanted to be with you.  In the beginning, it wasn’t even you.  It was just a promise of you.  And it was a promise you kept every time you stood at my side, helped me feel like I could do this and find a _home_ in this time when I had nothing and no one.  You’ve been my teammate, my partner, my friend.  And then you’ve been more, so much more than I could have hoped for.  I know things haven’t always been easy or conventional–”  He couldn’t help a smile at that.  “–for either of us.  But even when my head was full of doubts, my heart knew the truth.  It always has, and it always will.”  He shuffled a step closer.  He was so much taller than her that she had to look up at him.  “I’ll take care of you.  I’ll be the one who stands up for you against the whole world if I need to, the one who trusts you no matter what, who picks you up no matter how far you fall.  I’ll help you see the good things, even when it looks like there’s only bad.  I’ll be strong for you when you want to fall apart.  I’ll make you smile when you need it and help you sulk when you don’t.”  And she smiled at that.  He swallowed the tightness in his throat.  “Let me have this honor, now and forever.  Let me be your husband.  And even though I know you don’t need it…  Let me be your shield.”

Her eyes glazed with tears that she blinked back.  Her smile was wide and shaking.  It took her a moment to gather herself.  “Steve, I don’t have the words to tell you how you’ve changed my life.  I know I haven’t always done the right things and been a good person.  I’ve made so many mistakes.  I didn’t even realize how dark my life was until you showed me the light in the world, the light in you.  You saw through all of my lies, got past my defenses…  And you never judged me.  You gave me a chance, you of all people, when I didn’t deserve one.”  He wanted to argue that, but he didn’t.  “You taught me about honor and integrity.  You taught me about selflessness and sacrifice.  You taught me about giving, about openness, about trust.  You taught me how to love, how to be more than what I was made to be.  I could live a thousand years, and I’d never be able to thank you enough for that.  I promise to try, this day and every day after this one.  I’ll be the one who grounds you, who helps you carry the weight of the world you so often seem to have on your shoulders.  I’ll fight at your side, even when you want me to stay back.  I’ll stop you from being so serious, from losing yourself in your worries.  I’ll take care of you, too, carry you, pick you up when _you_ fall down, make it better when you get hurt, which I can already see is going to be a huge commitment in and of itself.”  He smiled sheepishly.  Somebody (Sam?) grunted half a chuckle.  “I’ll be the one who holds you to your oaths, the reasonable ones at least, and helps you let go of the promises you can’t keep.  I’ll make sure no matter how tired and worn you are, you always have a safe place where you can be Steve Rogers, not Captain America.  I’ll be the one to give you a dance, no matter how tired my feet are.”  She smiled, tears building so much that they shone in the sunlight.  “We’ve been teammates.  We’ve been partners.  We are friends.  Now I want to be your wife.  It would be my honor, now and forever.”

Steve couldn’t breathe.  He hadn’t known what to expect, but in that moment, it felt like every hurt he’d ever sustained in his life, physical, emotional, or spiritual, every bruise and harsh word and doubt and loss…  It was all gone, wiped away by her eyes and her words and her hands in his.  Her heart.  He’d never imagined when they’d started down this path in Crimea that they’d come to this point, where she felt _safe_ enough with him to trust him so completely as to give him her heart, surrender like this and leave herself so completely vulnerable.  That she’d ask for the honor of being his wife.  He was going to take care of her.  He was going to protect her, guard her, never let anyone hurt her again.  Every breath in his body was for her.  Every beat of his heart.  Every thought in his head and hope he had.  _Everything._

The minister was talking again.  He was asking for the rings, and Sam dutifully produced them from the pocket of his suit jacket.  The man blessed them and handed Natasha’s to Steve.  “Steven Grant Rogers, do you take this woman to be your wife, to have and to hold, to love and to cherish, on this day and for all the days of your life?”

He had a hard time following all of that his heart was pounding so hard, but he heard himself answering.  “Yes.”  He slid the ring, a silver band with diamonds inset all around it, onto her bare finger.

The minister went on.  “Natasha Romanoff, do you take this man to be your husband, to have and to hold, to love and to cherish, on this day and for all the days of your life?”

Natasha smiled coyly at him, the smile he loved most of all.  She took the other silver ring, took his hand, and put it on his finger.  “I do.”

“Then by the power vested in me by the State of New York, I pronounce you husband and wife.”  The minister couldn’t quite keep the grin from his face.  “You may kiss the bride, Captain.”

She stared at him, waiting, almost like she was daring him to do it.  Before she could tease him, he cupped her face and kissed her, gently for all of a moment and then harder.  She wrapped her arms around him, sliding over his shoulders to lock behind his neck.  The others were cheering.  Tony let out a loud whoop and Thor laughed.  Sam clasped Clint on the shoulder, and Clint in turn threw an arm around Sharon.  Maria smiled, nodding, beside Bruce, and Bruce whispered something to Pepper while they both clapped.

Steve deepened the kiss even more until they were both breathless.  He finally had to pull away and make sure this was real, that he wasn’t dreaming.  He looked into her eyes.  She cocked an eyebrow.  “What are you waiting for, Rogers?  Keep kissing me.”

“Aye-aye,” he chuckled, and he followed his orders.

* * *

In terms of endings, this was a good one.  A really good one.  A perfect one.

As perfect an ending as it was, though, it was an even _better_ beginning.

The party afterwards wasn’t much, just dinner and drinking and enjoying each other’s company, but it was exactly what they all wanted.  There was so much good cheer that it was hard to remember how hard the path had been to get to this place, to this perfect ending.  And maybe that was a good thing.  Steve was tired of dwelling on the past, on the darkness.  It was still there, would always be there.  If there was anything he’d learned from the last six months it was that evil couldn’t be vanquished.  It would never be entirely defeated.  There were always going to be bad men with evil intentions.  There were always going to be monsters, vile scientists, cruel villains, and vicious tyrants intent upon destroying peace.

But the Avengers were going to be there, too.  Much more so than after the Battle of New York, this evening was the birth of something good.  Something strong.  Friendships and family.  There were silent oaths sworn to each other that none of them was going to have to face horrors like these alone ever again.  They were a team, and they were going to stand by one another in defense of the world.  Evil could try to tear them down, but it wouldn’t succeed.  Not ever again.

They gathered at one of the long, gleaming tables in front of the most lavish meal Steve had ever seen.  Fine wine, steak and lobster, gourmet sides on china plates that looked so expensive that they might shatter from the shock of having a poor Brooklyn kid eating off them.  Tony offered up a toast.  He stood, lifting a crystal flute of champagne.  “Here’s to you two.  Cap, thanks for making her seem slightly less terrifying.  I now know I’ve got you to hide behind the next time I piss her off.”  Steve resisted the urge to roll his eyes.  “And Natasha, I’m counting on you to extract the stick from his butt.  Mellow him out.  Especially since it seems like this Avengers thing is about to become rather permanent.  I don’t want Captain Uptight riding us all the time.”  Pepper flushed with embarrassment.  Tony noticed, and his face softened.  “Seriously, though, if there were ever two people who deserve a chance at happiness, it’s you guys.  You’ve been through a lot, and we’ve been along for the ride, and I have to say…  Well, I don’t know what to say.  I know more about Steve’s internal anatomy and Natasha’s reproductive system than I ever wanted to.”

“Tony,” Pepper quietly warned from beside him.

Tony bailed out before this got worse.  “I’m just glad it’s over and we’re all alive and in one piece.  And here’s to being together for this.”  He quirked a smile.  “So cheers.”

A murmur of agreement went around the table.  Glasses were clinked together.  After that, they ate.  The table was filled with quiet conversations, easy camaraderie and happy voices.  As nice as it was, Steve felt antsy.  And hot.  He sat next to Natasha, and under the table her thigh was pressed tight to his.  She was doing it on purpose, of course.  When the plates were cleared away and the wait staff brought out the cake, they opted to dispense with the silly traditions, mostly because Natasha had boldly kept her hand on his leg the entire second half of dinner.  He reached under surreptitiously once or twice to take it, kissing her fingers and gently and subtly leaving it on the table when he was done.  But it kept coming back.  Innocent, but not innocent enough.  Teasing.  As a blush heated up his face and went down his neck, he wondered if he could survive a lifetime of her torment.  And he wondered how much longer this was going to go before he could get her alone.

Eventually the meal came to an end.  Final congratulations were spoken.  Hugs were shared.  Natasha and Clint, tender, knowing, and loving.  Steve and Sam.  Thor wrapped Steve against him, wishing him well like this would be the last time they’d see each other for a while (though it wouldn’t be).  Bruce offered up something fairly close to a hug, a bit reticent but still appreciated.  Clint came to him last.  “Thanks for saving my life,” the archer said, shaking Steve’s hand firmly.

Clint had thanked him before, of course, but this time seemed more meaningful.  “Thanks for saving her.  All the times you did.”

Clint nodded.  “Take care of her,” he said.  There was a hint of sadness in his tone, not jealousy or regret, but simply bittersweet grief over something that was ending.  “I told you once before.  It was after you got shot, so you probably don’t remember because you were pretty knocked out.”  He smiled faintly.  “And you have.  Taken care of her, that is.  And I know you’ll keep doing it.”  Steve had never heard Clint babble nervously, but this was pretty close.  “But just let me say it, huh?”

Steve nodded.  “Sure, Clint.”

Barton made half an attempt to blink the wetness from his eyes before nodding himself and heading down the hall with the others.  Steve turned, his eyes settling on Natasha.  Finally they were almost alone.

Almost.  “I have a surprise for you two lovebirds,” Tony announced once he was done seeing Bruce and Pepper out of the dining room.  Steve inwardly groaned.  “Come on.”  Once Stark was turning and heading out into the hallway, Steve shared an annoyed, long-suffering look with Natasha, but she only shrugged and went to follow the inventor.

A moment later they were back on the helipad, only it was sunset now.  A Stark Industries helicopter was waiting for them.  “Tony, what’s this?” Steve asked, shaking his head in confusion.

Tony stopped in front of him, pulling a set of keys out of his suit pocket.  “This is a helicopter about to fly the two of you to LaGuardia, where you will find a jet that will then take you somewhere pretty nice for the week.”  He dangled the keys before Steve until he lifted an open hand.  Tony dropped them into his palm.  “And these are the keys to the house you’ll find there.  Everything’s already ready.  Your stuff’s there.”  Steve looked at him, shocked beyond thought or question.  Tony cocked his head slightly, obviously proud of himself for rendering him speechless.  “Go.  I’d tell you to make babies, but you’ve already done that, so–”

“Stark,” Natasha groaned, pushing past him to walk to the helicopter. 

Steve wasn’t so ready to brush him aside.  “I don’t know what to say.”

“Don’t have to say anything,” Tony said with a soft smile.  He stepped closer and hugged Steve, who was still a bit stiff with surprise.  He patted Steve roughly on the back.  “Go and have fun.  You deserve it.”

Steve couldn’t believe it.  “Thanks.  For everything.”

Natasha turned around near the door of the chopper.  “By the way, you owe me twenty dollars.”

Tony appraised her doubtfully.  And Steve even more so.  “Seriously?”  Steve managed his best impassive face as he nodded.  “You didn’t so much as glance in her direction until this afternoon?”  Steve bobbed his head again, trying to seem the appropriate amount of earnest.  Tony wasn’t convinced.  “You’re full of it, Rogers.”

Steve shrugged.  “Ask JARVIS.  I know you have him tracking everyone in the Tower.”

“Which is kind of perverted,” Natasha added.

Tony glanced between them, seeming increasingly trapped like he didn’t know what to think.  Obviously if JARVIS confirmed their story, Tony would have to believe it.  Steve pulled out his best poker face and kept it steady until Tony finally sighed in irritation.  He fished in his pocket for a wad of bills and produced a twenty, which he snapped crisply before begrudgingly handing it to Steve.  Steve flashed him a grin.  “Thanks, Tony.”

“You two are trying to deceive me.  I know it.”  He stabbed an accusatory finger at Steve.  “You’ve got this whole wholesome, national icon BS going on, but I know she’s corrupted you.  I’ll find out the truth.  And when you get back, I expect that _exact_ twenty put back in my hand with an apology and an admission of guilt.”  He turned and offered up a wave.  “See you next week.”

Steve smiled and pocketed the money.  He watched until Tony was back inside the Tower before joining Natasha at the steps into the helicopter.  “Proud of me?”

She had her arms folded across her chest, her lips twisted into a smirk.  “I guess it really happened.  I taught Captain America how to lie.”

Steve shrugged before slipping an arm around her waist.  “A bet’s a bet.  Besides…”  He kissed her sweetly.  “A little white lie never hurt anyone.”

She pushed him away, climbing up into the helicopter.  “I don’t know you anymore,” she joked.

“Yeah, you do,” he returned as he followed.  They walked inside and found expensive leather seats waiting for him, into which Steve playfully manhandled her.  “And you married me.”

“I did,” she whispered as he knelt in front of her so he could lightly pin her against her seat.  She grabbed him by his tie and hauled him closer.  The low, golden lights in the fuselage caught her rings as she set her hands to his face, and the diamonds glimmered.  “Ironic that you turn me into an honest woman and I turn you into a liar.”

“Very,” he agreed, pressing in for a kiss that lasted well into the pilot asking them to get ready for take-off.  It was a good thing he was patient, because it went well after it, too.

* * *

About four hours later, their private jet landed in the Bahamas.  Steve didn’t quite realize where they were at first; it was very dark by the time they got there, and the starless, moonless night hid the islands and surrounding ocean extremely well.  The warm, salty air was his first clue that they’d been taken somewhere tropical, and he glanced quizzically at Natasha, but she only shrugged.  Once they reached the airport, it was another a quick transfer to a smaller plane, and that resulted in a short flight to an airstrip on another island.  They were greeted there by a chauffeur, who guided them into a limousine and drove them up a short, hilly road.  At its top there was a huge beach house.  “Stark’s?” Steve asked Natasha.  Despite his dislike of things overly expensive and extravagant, he couldn’t help his excitement.  He’d never done anything like this before.

Natasha shrugged again.  “Must be.”  She moved forward in her seat to get a better view of the estate as they neared.  The chauffeur rounded a cul-de-sac filled with flowers and neatly trimmed bushes and trees.  He deposited them at the door.

Steve helped Natasha out of the car and then handed Tony’s twenty along with another of his own to the driver.  The man tried to refuse it, claiming Mr. Stark had told him not accept any gratuity, but Steve insisted, and finally he relented with a smile and a “thank you”.  “You’re gonna be in trouble,” Natasha sing-songed as they walked up to the doors.

Steve fished for the key in his suit pocket.  “Why?  Stark’ll never prove he won the bet.  Besides, that guy works for him, so it’s kinda like paying him back.”  He produced the key and unlocked the massive doors.  Inside was the richest place Steve had ever seen, let alone entered (and that was saying a lot, given the number of times he’d been in Stark Tower).  His eyes were wide with utter awe as he beheld the enormity and luxury.  “Wow.”  The floors were parquet and marble.  There were pillars, vaulted ceilings, and furniture that looked far too pristine and perfect to even think of actually using.  On the polished front entry table there was a folded note.  Curious, he went and picked it up.  “All yours for the week.  Closets and pantry already stocked.  Wait staff will be there in the morning.  Enjoy, and don’t get into trouble.  Signed T. Stark.”

Steve looked up, watching as Natasha made a show of looking around.  “You knew about this,” he lightly accused, “didn’t you.”

Ever composed in her masquerades, Natasha only coolly cocked an eyebrow.  “I might have mentioned something to him.”  She sauntered forward, making a point to glide right past him without touching him.  “You said you wanted a vacation.  Someplace tropical, right?”  Her voice drifted into the huge area beyond, probably heading towards a bedroom.  He collected his jaw off the floor and rushed to follow her.  Sure enough, she went straight to the master bedroom (which only further proved she’d known – _planned_ – this.  When had she had time to do that?).  The bedroom, like everything else here, was huge, with a California king size bed adorned in bedding that was silk and satin.  There was more furniture than anyone had any right to put in one place.  A huge television was sleek and black on the wall in an adjoining lounge.  Polished wooden chairs with beautiful upholstery comprised a seating area to the left.  The lights were low, making the tan, cream, and taupe color scheme seem dark and rich.

Natasha was already at two French doors draped in gossamer on the other side of the bedroom.  She unlocked them and pulled them open.  Immediately warm, sweet air blew inside.  There was a private deck outside, and beyond that, a beach filled with white sand and the softly rolling waves of an inky ocean.  The night was dark, sultry, and in the distance there was lightning and thunderheads.  “Does this meet your expectations?” she called as she stepped outside.

He shucked his suit jacket, loosening his tie and tossing that to one of the chairs as well.  He went to her as she stood at the railing of the deck.  The air was thick in his lungs and on his skin.  Thunder grumbled, far away and unimposing, barely audible over the swish of the sea.  The lightning was purple and white.  It was breath-taking.  And there was no one anywhere close by.  They were completely and utterly alone.  “Wow,” he said dumbly again, unable to keep the latest of his countless stupid grins off his face.  “Much nicer than the last time we did this.”

“I had Stark pack a few guns just in case.”

He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye.  “You didn’t.”  She looked smugly at him.  “You did.”

“Gotta be prepared, right?”

He didn’t know if she was pulling his leg.  He didn’t really care.  She was Black Widow.  The day she wasn’t armed and prepared to fight was the day the earth stopped spinning, as far as he was concerned.

They stood together and observed the storm out over the ocean for a few minutes.  Then Natasha dragged her hand lightly across his back over his shoulder blades.  She stood taller to kiss his cheek.  Her lips traced a soft, sensual line to his.  Teasing.  “I’m going to go get changed,” she said.  He watched her go, the sway of her hips, the way she glanced once over her shoulder at him with a curl to her mouth and fire in her eyes that made him _ache_.  He knew what she was doing.  She was pulling out all of the stops, seducing him like she actually needed to, like this was some sort of game.  It was one, really, and he was whole-heartedly and eagerly prepared to lose it.  So he let her go, instead staying at the railing and staring into the night.

Minutes passed slowly.  Steve let them.  He didn’t really think, his mind blissfully empty for the first time in what felt to be a long time.  A _very_ long time.  He had no true cares.  No concerns.  He didn’t know if he was just tired or undone by the day’s emotional events (not to mention all those life-changing moments prior to this one) but he definitely did not feel the need to ponder anything further.  He just let the hot night wind brush over him, cleanse him, brush away the last of his troubles.  They’d still be there tomorrow, his concerns about Bucky, his fears about fatherhood (which was pretty terrifying when he considered it), his questions about how the Avengers were going to function in this new world without SHIELD or anyone else overseeing them.  And everything that was still hurting from what he’d endured.  It was much healed, and what was persisting would persist tomorrow, so there was no sense in thinking about it now.  He just looked at the sky and listened to the ocean and felt the wind and wondered how in the world a skinny, asthmatic kid from 1940s Brooklyn had managed to find his way here, in this time, in this place, and married to the world’s deadliest assassin.  How they’d gone through everything they’d gone through together, from their first ill-fated mission on that tropical island where they’d been alone and arguing constantly and struggling to trust each other, to here and now, on the verge of the rest of their lives.  Her life.  His life that he couldn’t imagine living without her.

It was mind-boggling and so awesome that figuring it out was impossible, so he stopped trying.

Tomorrow he was going to swim in the ocean and run in the sand.  He was going to drink and eat too much.  He was going to sleep however much he wanted.  He was going to play with Natasha, love her, make love to her, relax and _enjoy_ this like he’d never enjoyed anything before.  He was going to…

There was a rustle behind him.  He turned to find her in the doorway, dressed in a white satin nightgown that shimmered against her skin.  It hugged the curves of her breasts, her hips, flowing away to her feet.  Her hair was so dark, as deep as burnt umber, still wild with waves and curls around the pale column of her neck to tickle down the skin of her shoulders.  Steve couldn’t think about much of anything other than how she looked, how she was _looking_ at him.  Her voice was a low, welcoming murmur.  “Come to bed, Captain Rogers.”

The capacity to think pretty spectacularly failed him.  All the blood in his body was going south again in a hurry.  He almost stumbled over his own feet getting across the deck to her.  Then he was smirking before he thought better of it.  “Mrs. Rog–”

“Don’t even think about it,” she warned, grabbing him by the front of his dress shirt and leading him over to the bed.  She’d turned off all the lights, which made her eyes burn that much brighter with desire.  “No.  No Mrs. Rogers.”

Honestly, he hadn’t expected her to take his name.  It was what he knew and would have preferred, but it wasn’t her, and he was okay with that.  And he couldn’t much manage more than a fleeting thought about it at any rate.  “Uh-huh.”

Her fingers were smoothly undoing every button down his chest.  “No ordering me around.”

“Still wouldn’t dream of it.”

“No treating me like I’m any different,” she declared, pushing his now open shirt off his shoulders and his arms.  She untucked it from his pants and tossed it.  Then she pushed him down on the bed.  He could have stopped her.  He didn’t.  Her fingers wove their way through his hair, tilting his head up, and as fervent and passionate as all their other kisses that day had been, this one was bordering on complete debauchery.  Steve simply held on as she plundered his mouth, kissing until he was sure his lips were bruised and swollen.  She fisted his undershirt and leaned back enough to pull it over his head.  Her hands were back in his hair.  “I’m no different,” she said.

“I know.”  But even still, he lowered his face to plant a kiss on the slight bump in her stomach.  “No different.”  This was softer, far less passionate, far more reverent.  He ran his fingers lightly down her hips to her thighs, gathering smooth satin to push it up her body.  Her eyes closed as he caressed his lips across her belly, spending a moment on the scar on her hip before traveling back to the center of her stomach, kissing gently below her navel.  He closed his eyes just a moment, lingering there, before moving higher, finding the faded mark from when the Winter Soldier had nearly killed her.  He was careful, his lips exploring, tender in each brush and press.  His fingers roamed even higher, sweeping over her breasts through the thin fabric of the nightgown. 

She drew a shaking breath against him, shivering as he touched her.  His mouth went upward, sucking and nipping and teasing.  “Steve,” she moaned.  Her eyes were half-lidded and swimming with need.  “Up, soldier.”  She tugged him to his feet again.  They kissed, wet and heated, while she worked on his belt.  He helped as she pushed his pants down, kicking off his shoes first before getting rid of the rest of his clothes.  She went at him with abandon, touching everything she could, tasting and kissing even more than that.  He closed his eyes and struggled to keep his breathing even and his head clear enough to think.  It was a losing battle, particularly when she pushed him back down onto the bed again.  This time he lay down, shifting toward the head of it to find the pillows.  She never lost contact with him, her mouth hot and searching on his, claiming, controlling as she guided him where she wanted him.  This was so much as it had been, back in Yalta, back in his apartment in DC.  She wanted, and he gave.  She took, and he let her.  He got so much pleasure from that, from _her_ pleasure, that his own didn’t seem to matter.

To him, anyway.  It always mattered to her.

She kissed her way up his body, teeth lightly teasing along his thighs, lips darting tantalizingly close along his hips only to pull away when the pressure and heat turned too much.  She continued there, ghosting over him with her hands and mouth until he thought he was going to pass out from anticipation.  The fever in his blood was raging, the room a dark swirl of shadow that was pressing closer and closer as she pushed him right to the edge of release.  And she left him there, manipulating him just like she always did, and he wondered yet again in blissful frustration how he was going to survive a lifetime of this.  Eventually she kissed higher, over his stomach, up his sternum, teeth grazing along his collarbone.  There was a scar there on his shoulder, new and tender, and she was particularly careful in her treatment of it before making her way back to his throat.  He tipped his head back and bared it to her with a hoarse groan as she reached down between their bodies again to touch him.  He wasn’t above begging.  At least, not with her.  “Nat, please…  Please…”

She fumbled slightly, straddling him.  The cool silk of her nightgown contrasted sharply with the warmth of her body as she sank onto him.  Steve closed his eyes and bit his lower lip hard, trying to hold on.  He didn’t know why exactly; they’d made love so many times since that first night all those months ago, but this moment, here and now with her so tight around him, felt beyond intense.  Distant thunder rumbled, and the wind blew into the room, sending the curtains aflutter and her hair blowing across her shoulders.  She took his hands from her hips and curled their fingers together as she collapsed forward, pinning his arms and holding him still as she delved into his mouth.  “Mine,” she whispered.  Steve gave a hoarse groan, bucking under her control, but she didn’t let him go.  She moved, and he flew too high to come down.

Eventually he did, though.  It took a long time to think again even as the heat and pleasure ebbed.  The wind still drifted inside the room, bringing the smell of the ocean and approaching rain.  She was curled beside him, head on his chest, drawing lazy patterns across his sweat-cooled skin.  He stroked his hand up and down her back, making ripples in the fabric of the nightgown.  He was having a hard time focusing, more contented than he could ever remember feeling.  He didn’t believe he could ever be happier, more satisfied and relaxed, than this.

The room was silent save for soft, rushes of breaths, hearts beating, and the ocean against the beach.  Rolling thunder and whistling wind.  After a great while, she spoke against his side.  “When you were fighting him, I wasn’t afraid.”  Her voice was nothing more than a whisper.  “I know I should have been, but…  I feel the serum inside me now.  Inside them.  It’s like…  It’s like life.  And it’s not some formula or procedure that’s made it what it is.  It’s you.”  Steve released a shuddering breath into her hair.  “So much light against the darkness.  You stood against him, and I _knew_ you would win.”  She lifted her head to look into his eyes.  In the shadows, hers were fathomless.  The way she looked at him…  He almost couldn’t take it.  “I don’t think you even know how powerful you are.  How important you are.  How much the world needs you.”  She lifted her hand to his face.  “How much I need you.”

“Nat…”

“I know you’re mine.  Tell me I’m yours,” she whispered against his lips.

He pressed his palms to her cheeks.  She slid her lips over his thumb.  “You’re mine.”

Her breath was a sweet brush of damp warmth into his mouth as she came closer.  “Tell me forever.”

“Forever,” he said in between languid kisses that grew faster and hungrier.  He grabbed her nightgown and pulled it away, up and over her head, and made certain every inch of her skin was against his.

Her final words were an imploration.  “Tell me you’ll never leave me again.”

He rolled them, trapping her against the pillows and wrapping her legs around his hips.  “Never,” he promised.  “Never again.”  She moaned beneath him, coming apart under his hands and lips.  “Never ever again.”

The night went on.  He fell asleep sometime after their passion was finally spent.  It was deep.  Dreamless.

When he woke up, the world was gray.  It was a haze, dull, lusterless.  Endless.  But it was simply the first tender light of morning against a silver sky.  Steve blinked tiredly, quite interested in going back to sleep, but when he felt that Natasha was missing from underneath the duvet beside him, he sat up.  For one terrible instant, reality blurred, and he wondered if he was back there, trapped in the fog without her by his side.  Searching for himself.  Searching for her.  His eyes widened, looking about desperately, and his heart lurched in horror.

But there were no nightmares here.  Right away he found her.  She was outside on the deck, standing barefoot on rain-soaked wood planks and looking out over the sea.  She was wearing his dress shirt, lazily buttoned and barely covering her.  He pushed the duvet aside and stood, finding his boxers in the scatter of clothes on the floor and clumsily putting them on.  Then he padded quietly outside.

It was warm, humid, even so early.  The air was sweet and still.  The ocean was quiet.  The clouds were slate, but they were thinning, wispy tendrils and puffs that were turning purple and gold with the light of the sun coming up from the horizon.  He moved behind her, sliding his arms around her body.  Touching her, holding her, was such a relief that that one fearful moment vanished completely to leave him boneless and breathless.  She didn’t startle as he hugged her, but she relaxed all the same, like she, too, felt the same thankfulness in having him right there behind her.  She let out a long breath, exposing her neck to him as he kissed the nape of it, tender brushes and suckles of his mouth that made her close her eyes and melt into him.  “Mornin’,” he mumbled into the soft, smoothness of her skin.  She only hummed in response.  “You want to come back to bed?  It’s early.”

“No,” she said on a breath.  His hands enfolded her completely, linked together on her across her hips, over the small swell of their children.  She breathed deeply, breathed with him and leaned back into his chest.  “Thought I’d watch the sunrise.”

Steve smiled, more at peace with himself than he ever had been or ever thought he could be.  Everything they’d gone through, everything that had hurt them…  It had only made them stronger.  Stronger in each other.  For each other.  It had only brought them here.  Together.  Friends and partners.  Captain America and Black Widow.  Husband and wife.

She turned away from the sea, turned and sought his lips.  Her right hand slid up his neck, tangling in his hair as she kissed him.  Her left joined his, weaving them together over her stomach.  Over the new life inside her.  The future that lay ahead of them.  “I love you,” she whispered.

“I love you, too.”

Dawn broke through the cloud cover.  It was going to be a beautiful day.

**THE END**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, guys, we made it. What a long time it took to get here. Hopefully you guys enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. "Heat Wave", "Red Rain", "Terminal Frost", and "Cloud Cover" represent the first arc in _Heart of the Storm_ , so this is meant to be something of an end to the story up to this point. Don't worry; I still have plans for things to come, but a lot of the plots concerning the Red Room, HYDRA, and SHIELD are pretty much concluded here. The next story literally starts a new chapter in Steve and Natasha's lives.
> 
> I want to thank everyone for supporting this series. It's really turning into something with a life all its own, and that's in no small part because of you guys. Special thanks to the romanogers group on Twitter for all their love and devotion. You guys rock! And, of course, thanks to all of you who have read, commented, and followed this tale, as well as its predecessors. And, as always, tons of gratitude for E, my beta-reader, without whom I would never be able to figure out what the heck I'm doing.
> 
> Extra special thanks to the wonderful [mrsbarnes1o7](http://mrsbarnes1o7.tumblr.com//) for the beautiful cover art for this story:
> 
> And thanks to the always amazing [vbprodz](http://vbprodz.tumblr.com) for this artwork inspired by Steve and Natasha's honeymoon:
> 
> And much gratitude to [lbs29](http://lbs29.tumblr.com) for this stunning artwork of the wedding:
> 
> Come find me on [tumblr](http://thegraytigress.tumblr.com)!


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